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The  Story  of  a  Fortunate  Youth 


THE  STORY 

of  a 

FORTUNATE   YOUTH 

Chapters  from  the  Biography 
of  an  Elderly  Gentleman 

By 
JEAN  KENYON  MACKENZIE 


BOSTON 
THE  ATLANTIC  MONTHLY  PRESS 


Copyright,  19W 
By  the  Atlantic  Monthly  Company 

Copyright,  WHO 
By  Jean  Eenyon  Mackenzie 


tY!!f 


To 
My  Mother 


PREFACE 

The  old  gentleman  of  whom  there  is  ac- 
count in  this  little  book  has  had  many  more 
adventures  and  adventures  more  impressive 
than  are  here  recorded.  Of  this  I  am  assured 
by  himself  and  by  his  friends.  It  seems  a 
pity,  say  his  friends,  that  there  should  be  no 
place  in  a  book  about  him  for  the  honors  he 
has  received,  the  benefits  he  has  conferred, 
and  the  friendships  he  has  made.  There  is 
so  much  more  to  tell  about  him,  they  claim, 
than  I  have  told. 

This  omission  of  notable  events  is  much  to 
be  regretted.  It  is  true  of  the  old  gentleman 
that  he  has  lived  an  honored  and  a  crowded 
life.  Many  a  one  there  is  to  tell  you  that. 
But  of  the  events  recorded  in  the  following 
pages  there  is  only  myself  to  tell  you.  There 
is  none  other  who  has  counted  over  so  exactly 
the  little  treasure  of  coins  that  were  the  for- 
tune of  his  youth.  And  this  book  is  no  more 
than  a  purse  in  which  they  have  been  laid 
away  —  a  kind  of  savings. 


CONTENTS 

The  Boy  and  the  Bawbee     .       .  1 

The  Boy  and  the  Half-Crown    .  17 

The  Boy  and  the  Dollar      .       .  41 

The  Wages  of  Youth      ...  74 


THE  STORY  OF  A 

FORTUNATE  YOUTH 

THE  BOY  AND  THE  BAWBEE 


The  old  gentleman  claims  that  many 
years  ago  his  name  was  Rubie.  And 
that  this  was  not  at  all  a  romantic  name, 
but  just  a  nickname.  And  that  he,  who 
dresses  like  any  other  decent  body  now- 
adays, did  the  same  in  the  eigh teen- 
fifties.  He  wore  a  kilt,  a  wee  bit  shirt, 
a  velveteen  jacket,  and  a  Glengarry  bon- 
net. His  galluses  were  latched  to  his 
kilts  with  a  wooden  pin.  There  were 
pockets  to  his  jacket,  and  into  one  of 
these  he  put  a  bawbee  when  he  had  one. 
And  the  first  bawbee  ever  he  had  he 
found  in  the  dust  of  a  long  summer  day. 
1 


A  FORTUNATE  YOUTH 

You  would  never  guess,  unless  the  old 
gentleman  told  you,  how  the  Highlands 
of  Scotland  are  continually  bathed  in 
summer.  They  are  like  those  happy 
countries  you  may  see  from  the  peep  end 
of  an  Easter  egg.  And  more  than  any- 
where the  long  summer  day  hangs  upon 
the  coast  of  the  North  Sea  and  about  the 
neighborhood  of  the  Moray  Firth.  Yes, 
that  is  the  sort  of  day  they  have,  and  in 
the  last  light  of  any  one  of  them  you  may 
see  little  boys  drifting  home  from  golden 
adventures  to  their  beds  in  the  villages 
of  Ross  and  Cromarty. 

On  a  Saturday  afternoon  the  boys 
have  been,  as  like  as  not,  to  Jerry's  Den. 
It  was  there  that  the  bawbee  of  which 
we  are  told  was  found  in  the  dust.  A 
bawbee  is  a  halfpenny,  so  called  because, 
when  INIary  Queen  of  Scots  came  to  the 
throne  as  a  baby,  —  or  what  the  Scotch 
in  their  own  tongue  call  a  "bawbee,"  — 


THE  BOY  AND  THE  BAWBEE 

a  coin  of  that  value  was  struck  with  her 
image.  And  between  a  little  Scotch  boy 
and  a  bawbee  there  is  to  this  day  a  thrill- 
ing affinity.  There  is  in  this  matter  a 
permanent  devotion,  a  quest,  and  a  re- 
current adventure.  Some  little  boys 
achieve  bawbees  and  some  have  these 
thrust  upon  them,  but  I  will  tell  you  at 
once  that  the  best  bawbees  are  found. 
If  on  the  coach  road,  says  the  old  gen- 
tleman, you  find  a  snail's  trail  in  the 
dust,  you  follow  that  silver  lead  into 
the  grass  where  you  find  the  snail,  and 
then  you  twirl  it  three  times  about  your 
head.  This  is  a  charm  with  intent  to 
find  presently  a  bawbee. 

But  on  this  long  summer  day  the  baw- 
bee just  came  to  hand  without  aid  of 
snail  or  other  magic.  And  it  did  not  at 
first  seem,  says  the  old  gentleman,  to  be 
his  own.  He  put  it  in  the  pocket  of  his 
jacket,  provisionally,  and  not  meaning 
S 


A  FORTUNATE  YOUTH 

to  use  it;  but  —  in  tumbling  —  out  it  fell 
upon  the  ground,  and  there  was  another 
boy  shouting  that  "Ruble  has  a  bawbee 
and  will  buy  the  sweeties";  which  he 
then  did.  This  was  the  beginning  of  a 
beneficent  custom  always  encouraged  by 
his  hangers-on,  and  instituted,  as  I  now 
see,  with  his  first  fortune. 

His  second  fortune  was  earned,  and  in 
foreign  parts.  A  sister  took  him  across 
the  Cromarty  Firth  to  see  his  granny. 
The  most  gilded  climate  is  not  flawless, 
and  there  came  a  storm  upon  that  lit- 
tle boat  in  that  narrow  sea-way.  The 
old  gentleman  remembers  that  he  then 
made  his  first  prayer:  "O  Lord  God  of 
Israel!"  he  prayed,  —  neither  more  nor 
less,  —  and  came  safe  to  the  other  side. 

Here  among  the  hills  was  a  shelling 

where   his   granny   lived.     There   were 

three  rooms  in  this  cabin,  —  a  bit  and  a 

ben  and  a  room  atween,  —  and  oh,  such 

4 


THE  BOY  AND  THE  BAWBEE 

cosy  windows !  Very  wee  they  were,  be- 
cause windows  were  taxed;  but  the  chim- 
ney was  not  taxed  at  all,  and  that  was 
big  and  with  an  ingle. 

His  granny  was  in  bed;  she  wore  a 
white  mutch,  and  if  you  will  believe  it, 
she  did  not  know  his  name!  He  could 
read,  which  she  could  not.  She  asked  her 
daughter  in  Gaelic,  could  he  repeat  the 
Twenty -third  Psalm;  and  this  he  did 
for  her  in  the  English  tongue.  Where- 
upon from  under  her  pillow  she  took 
a  knotted  handkerchief,  and  from  this 
with  her  old  hands  she  took  a  white 
shilling. 

Lord  God  of  Israel !  A  fortune,  and  all 
earned  in  the  high  way  of  Religion.  But 
there  is  this  sad  difiference  between  a 
bawbee  and  a  shilling:  you  buy  sweeties 
with  the  one,  but  you  take  the  other  to 
your  mither. 

Rubie's  mother  was  from  Forres  way. 
5 


A  FORTUNATE  YOUTH 

She  taught  her  little  boy  to  write  with 
the  sharpened  handle  of  a  pewter  spoon, 
and  this  she  did  that  he  might  write 
her  letters  to  his  father,  who  was  away 
at  work  in  the  North.  He  was  a  mill- 
wright. This  was  the  time  of  the  Corn 
Laws  and  the  Irish  Famine  and  Richard 
Cobden. 

The  old  gentleman  tends  to  wander 
from  Rubie  at  this  point;  he  grows 
historical  and  geographical  and  pedan- 
tic, until  we  drag  him  back  to  the  day 
when  there  was  no  dinner.  We  remind 
him  that  once  he  came  home  from 
the  Dame's  school  and  "there'll  be 
no  dinner  the  day,"  says  his  mother. 
Rubie  takes  what  measures  he  may  — 
he  lies  face  down  across  a  chair,  on  the 
principle  and  for  the  reason  that  a  hun- 
gry man  tightens  his  belt.  The  clock 
strikes  two  and  Rubie  looks  it  in  the 
face.  "  What 's  the  use  of  striking  two, " 
6 


THE  BOY  AND  THE  BAWBEE 

he  asks  of  that  mechanical  perfection, 
"when  there  is  no  dinner?"  And  I  sup- 
pose he  wrote  his  father  on  that  day  with 
a  clean,  clean  pewter  spoon. 

Other  letters  he  wrote,  coming  on  to 
be  eight  years  old,  for  other  women  to 
other  men,  and  for  each  he  was  paid 
tuppence.  The  serving-maids  in  the 
farms  round  about  would  send  for  little 
Ruble,  and  on  a  Saturday  —  a  lang 
simmer  day  —  he  would  be  writing  let- 
ters for  one  and  another  in  garret  rooms 
under  the  eaves.  The  service-bell  would 
ring,  and  the  maid  would  run  to  answer; 
the  scribe  would  be  left  to  wait,  and  to 
look  about  that  little  room.  I  fear  he 
fingered  what  he  saw,  for  he  has  a  most 
exact  remembrance  of  a  maid  who  had 
a  pot  of  pomatum  on  her  dresser,  — 
"  Cream  of  Roses, "  it  was,  —  and  the 
scent  of  it,  the  first  scent  ever  he  savored, 
was  as  fine  as  the  name.  There  was, 
7 


A  FORTUNATE  YOUTH 

besides,  a  bottle  of  hair-oil,  scented  too. 
Tuppence  lie  was  paid  for  the  letter  he 
wrote  on  that  day;  and  he  claims  that  he 
can  see  the  young  girl  speaking,  after 
these  more  than  sixty  years,  and  that  he 
can  feel  himself  writing:  "I  send  you 
my  love  and  if  I  was  writing  myself  I 
would  say  much  more. " 

II 

He  claims  further  that  his  next  job 
brought  him  in  sixpence  a  day,  his  board, 
and  a  pair  of  rubber  boots.  In  those  lang 
simmer  days  he  herded  cattle  and  silly 
sheep  on  the  flanks  of  the  Soutars  of 
Cromarty,  among  the  prickles  of  the 
whins  where  a  little  lad  might  well  prize 
his  rubber  boots.  A  sixpence  a  day  we 
think  to  have  been  an  excessive  wage, 
but  he  holds  to  it  and  pretends  to  have 
had  butter  to  his  bread  —  that  was  an 
oat-cake  or  a  disk  of  barley  baked  and 
8 


THE  BOY  AND  THE  BAWBEE 

rolled  up.  Some  days  tliere  would  be 
a  Swedish  turnip,  and,  in  their  season, 
wild  berries,  and  —  oh,  sweetest  bite!  — 
a  potato  baked  in  the  embers  of  a  little 
fire  among  the  whins  or  the  heather,  and 
none  the  worse  for  the  ashes. 

The  luck  of  some  folk  is  too  much  for 
lesser  folk  to  bear,  and  this  little  boy 
with  his  bit  fire  and  his  spud  in  the  ashes 
and  his  buttered  oat-cake,  and  his  wild 
honey  from  the  ground  and  his  whistle 
that  he  made  from  willow,  —  and  all 
among  the  golden  whins  of  the  lang 
simmer  day,  —  how  we  envy  him!  We 
cannot  rob  him  of  one  hour,  but  we  take 
away  the  sixpence.  Sixpence,  we  say,  can 
never  have  been  paid  to  a  silly  little  shep- 
herd in  rubber  boots,  so  long  ago  and  so 
far  away.  The  wage,  we  say,  is  excessive. 
The  buttered  cake,  the  whistle  he  brags 
of,  and  the  honey  harried  from  the  bees' 
bike  in  the  mossy  ground  —  who  are  we, 
9 


A  FORTUNATE  YOUTH 

to  know  the  makings  of  these?  But  a 
sixpence  we  know,  and  how  it  is  made. 
A  sixpence  a  week  we  will  allow  him, 
and  no  more.  That  is  silver  enough  for 
a  lad  who,  by  his  own  count,  has  every 
other  sort  of  fortune. 

But,  he  argues,  all  the  other  shepherds 
get  the  sixpence!  For  there  are  more 
little  shepherds  lolling  about  in  the 
heather  on  the  hillsides  —  a  whole  union 
of  them  —  who  will  not  work  for  less 
than  sixpence,  who  will  not  work  indeed 
at  all,  but  who  eat  their  honey  and  pipe 
on  their  whistles  and  read  the  "Leather- 
Stocking  Tales"  and  "The  King's  Own" 
—  and  some  of  whom  will  come,  long 
after,  to  fall  from  the  ranks  of  that  same 
regiment  into  Egyptian  graves. 

Yet  here  they  all  are  in  the  lang  sim- 
mer day,  at  a  sixpence  apiece!  For  a 
drink  of  milk  they  will  bless  you:  "God 
bless  your  cows,  good  wife,  and  would  you 
10 


THE  BOY  AND  THE  BAWBEE 

be  giving  us  a  drink  of  water?"  "Bide 
a  wee, "  says  the  goodwife;  and  they  bide 
a  wee,  the  rascals,  till  she  comes  from 
ben  the  house  with  a  pitcher  of  milk. 

The  old  gentleman  claims  to  have  in- 
vented this  blessing  himself,  so  you  see 
how  clever  he  was  at  a  sixpence  a  day. 

Ill 

Yes,  he  was  clever,  terrible  clever;  do 
not  think  to  keep  up  with  him,  for  now 
he  is  a  tutor.  From  being  a  piping  shep- 
herd, he  has  become  a  tutor  and  has  the 
Latin.  That 's  him,  with  the  Latin,  going 
through  the  snow  to  the  shepherd's  cabin 
in  the  hills.  Thirteen  years  he  is  now, 
and  terrible  wee  he  is,  too,  but  there  is 
no  help  for  that.  He  must  just  face  the 
driving  snow  in  the  morning  moonlight, 
and  keep  close  on  the  heels  of  the  old 
shepherd,  whose  body  is  a  wall  against 
the  stour,  until  they  come  to  the  sheiling 
11 


A  FORTUNATE  YOUTH 

where  the  children  are  just  longing  for 
their  tutor  with  the  Latin. 

There  were  four  of  these,  and  a  great 
girl  who  had  for  her  own  the  wisest  of 
collies.  Aye,  after  many  a  year  we  re- 
member that  girl  and  that  dog  —  the  one 
whistling  her  orders  from  her  father's 
door  to  the  other  across  the  valley,  where 
he  stood  upon  a  rock  among  the  heather 
—  whence  he  sprang  away  to  herd  the 
straying  sheep  he  could  not  see.  Wise  as 
Solomon,  he  was,  that  dog! 

They  were  great  dancers  in  that  house. 
By  the  firelight  and  the  light  of  a  little 
pear-shaped  iron  lamp  that  hung  from 
the  lintel  of  the  fireplace,  its  wick  of 
rushes  fed  with  whale-oil,  they  danced 
to  the  piping  of  one  of  themselves.  And 
all  those  nights  of  dancing  —  there  were 
three  winter  months  of  them  —  were  em- 
bittered for  the  little  tutor  by  this :  there 
was  a  tear  in  his  jacket.  A  many  a  time 
12 


THE  BOY  AND  THE  BAWBEE 

in  my  life  he  has  told  me  of  this  tear :  that 
it  ran  down  the  front  of  his  coat;  that 
he  was  always  mending  it  with  a  pin  he 
had;  that,  whenever  he  swung  about  in 
the  fling  of  the  dance,  the  rent  part  of 
the  coat  stood  out  at  right  angles.  He 
was  never  so  ashamed  in  his  life,  he 
says.  There  is  nothing  for  it  now,  I 
know,  but  to  let  it  go  at  that;  but  I 
ask  about  the  big  young  shepherdess 
and  the  other  women  of  that  family  — 
could  they  not  have  mended  up  their  lit- 
tle tutor  and  so  have  saved  his  freckled 
face  ?  ' '  They  were  ungracious , ' '  says  the 
old  gentleman  with  reluctance,  and 
upon  revisiting  in  his  mind  that  group 
under  the  whale-oil  lamp. 

And  presently,  he  tells  me,  they  would 
have  prayers  after  the  dancing,  in  Gaelic, 
each  child  reading  in  turn  his  verse.  And 
then  to  bed  in  bunks  under  the  eaves, 
with  warm  blankets  and  feather  pillows. 
13 


A  FORTUNATE  YOUTH 

So  the  torn  jacket  is  forgotten  until 
another  evening.  And  never  to  be  forgot- 
ten, as  you  see  for  yourself;  always  to  be 
hanging  where  we  would  come  upon  it 
now  and  again,  and  remember  the  piping 
and  dancing,  and  the  "Hieland  pride" 
of  a  little  homesick  boy. 

Fifteen  shillings  were  the  three-months 
wage,  and  the  little  tutor  took  them  to 
his  father.  He  came  down  from  the  hills 
to  the  village  where  his  father  was  work- 
ing at  his  trade.  There  was  himself  at  the 
bench,  in  his  long  linen  apron.  I  know 
that  his  nickname  was  Winter,  but  it  was 
not  his  children  who  gave  him  that  name. 
On  this  day  when  he  saw  the  fortune  of 
shillings  in  that  little  fist,  he  met  the 
unique  hour  with  an  uncommon  grace. 
Deliberately  he  sat  himself  upon  his 
bench ;  he  threw  his  apron  over  his  shoul- 
der that  he  might  come  the  more  easily  at 
the  pocket  in  his  waistcoat;  he  thrust  his 
14 


THE  BOY  AND  THE  BAWBEE 

fingers  into  that  pocket,  and  he  brought 
out  his  snuff-box.  A  pinch  of  snuff  he 
took  himself,  and  then,  as  man  to  man, 
he  offered  the  box  and  the  quill  to  his 
boy.  As  if  that  little  tutor  were  Hugh 
Miller  or  any  other  of  his  father's  hon- 
ored cronies.  This  incredible  condescen- 
sion was  not  marred  by  any  words. 

And  I  will  tell  you  about  the  son  of 
wise  old  Winter,  that  he  ripened  more 
in  that  silence  than  in  a  month  of  sum- 
mers. Not  a  long  silence  it  was,  with 
fifteen  shillings  on  the  bench  between 
them,  needing  care.  A  sixpence  was  for 
Ruble,  and  "the  rest  you  '11  take  to  your 
mither." 

Which  he  did.  And  many  a  bawbee  of 
his  own  earning  has  slipped  through  his 
fingers  since  then.  An  inveterate  giver- 
away  he  is,  in  the  manner  of  old  Lear. 
But  the  snuff-box  he  has  not  given  away ; 
no  beggar  of  all  his  begging  children  has 
15 


A  FORTUNATE  YOUTH 

begged  of  him  the  snuff-box.  It  is  on  the 
chimneypiece  of  his  house;  and  I  think  it 
is  for  him  and  for  them  a  kind  of  symbol 
of  a  happy  sacramental  hour,  or  the  in- 
strument of  a  humble  accolade. 


THE  BOY 
AND  THE  HALF-CROWN 

I 

The  old  gentleman  and  I  often  walk 
abroad  in  a  rural  district  where  there  is  a 
taciturn  blacksmith.  The  old  gentleman 
always  maintains  an  illusion  of  a  chat 
with  this  man.  "I  '11  be  having  a  word 
with  the  smith,"  he  tells  me,  "while  you 
wait  outside. " 

I  sit  upon  a  fence  near  that  open  door 
where  the  tinkle  and  the  clank  of  the 
smithy  is  audible,  but  never  a  word  from 
the  blacksmith  or  his  guest.  Presently 
out  comes  the  old  gentleman,  very  bland 
and  entirely  satisfied  with  his  social  ad- 
venture. There  is  nothing  so  uplifts  him 
as  a  chat  with  a  blacksmith.  And  this  is 
because,  long  ago,  when  his  name  was 
17 


A  FORTUNATE  YOUTH 

Ruble,  he  being  then  about  thirteen 
years  of  age,  the  old  gentleman  worked 
in  a  smithy. 

This  was  in  a  village  near  Cromarty 
among  the  East  Highlands  of  Scotland. 
It  was  a  kind  of  three  corners  of  a  village, 
full  of  important  houses,  and  the  smithy, 
at  the  time  that  Ruble  worked  there,  was 
really  most  important.  Everyone  used 
to  call  upon  the  blacksmith.  This  is  the 
origin  doubtless  of  the  old  gentleman's 
sense  that  the  least  you  can  do  for  a 
smith,  if  you  pass  his  way,  is  to  call  upon 
him. 

The  youth  of  Ruble's  day,  in  making 
these  calls  in  the  village  of  three  corners, 
invariably  hung  about  and  made  itself 
handy,  holding  horses'  feet  for  the  shoe- 
ing, or  taking  a  turn  at  the  anvil.  And 
this  for  the  many  pleasures  of  the  deli- 
cious atmosphere  in  that  smithy  —  of 
a  deliberate  and  deft  business  going 
18 


THE  BOY  AND   THE   HALF-CROWN 

forward  there,  and  the  blooming  and 
the  fading  of  the  flame  and  of  the  glowing 
metal.  But  Rubie,  besides  his  share  in 
these  unparalleled  pleasures,  received  a 
shilling  a  day  for  what  he  did.  And  this 
is  what  he  did:  he  was  salesman,  and  he 
took  shoes  off  the  horses'  feet.  He  would 
take  the  horse's  hoof  upon  his  knee,  de- 
clares the  old  gentleman,  looking  at  us 
with  eyes  in  which  we  seem  to  see  how 
big  was  the  horse  with  his  hoof  on  the 
knee  of  little  Rubie.  And  he  would  pry 
off  the  shoe.  And  there  was  a  mate  of 
Rubie's,  little  like  himself,  and  about  the 
same  business  of  shoeing  horses,  on  whom 
the  horse,  growing  restless,  planted  his 
hoof,  and  the  boy  died.  This  tale,  never 
told  us  but  once,  seems  to  emphasize  the 
enormous  size  of  the  horses  treated  by 
little  Rubie;  seems  to  account  for  the 
shadow  of  their  size  which  is  in  the  old 
gentleman's  eyes  when  this  phase  of 
19 


A  FORTUNATE  YOUTH 

blacksmithing  is  dwelt  upon.  But  in  the 
main  you  feel,  in  his  account  of  this 
epoch,  the  thrilling  sense  of  the  dusk  of 
that  interior,  smitten  with  the  erratic 
light  from  the  forge  and  peopled  with 
young  visitors. 

The  shilling,  of  course,  says  the  old 
gentleman,  was  given  to  his  mother. 
Now  there  is  nothing  to  us  "of  course" 
in  this  monotony  of  deposit.  We  think, 
and  we  say  so,  that  a  shilling  should  have 
bought  his  way  into  other  of  the  import- 
ant houses  in  the  three  corners.  And  in 
a  second-hand  way,  he  agrees,  it  did. 
There  was  the  grocer's  house:  he  would 
be  sent  there  for  bread  and  for  fruit. 
Oranges  from  Spain  were  there  at  three- 
pence, nuts  were  there  from  Brazil, 
Zante  currants,  and  sticks  of  black  sugar. 
"Boys  bought  sticks  of  black  sugar,  you 
know,  flattened  with  a  seal  at  one  end. " 
We  don't  know;  we  feel  it  to  be  very 
20 


THE   BOY  AND   THE   HALF-CROWN 

thrilling,  and  are  much  disillusioned 
when  we  learn  that  black  sugar  stamped 
with  a  seal  is  just  nothing  but  licorice. 
We  think  it  not  at  all  exotic;  but  the  old 
gentleman  thinks  as  Rubie  thought  of 
black  sugar. 

The  grocer,  we  infer,  was  nothing 
much  to  remember.  He  was  just  a  crea- 
ture behind  a  counter,  who  took  your 
pennies  and  gave  you  in  return  currants 
dried  in  southern  suns.  The  butcher,  too, 
was  another  featureless  man  from  whom 
you  bought  meat  twice  a  week.  Fish- 
wives were  more  real,  because  you  tor- 
mented them,  for  all  j^our  mother  chid 
you.  They  were  of  another  tribe,  coming 
to  the  village  from  Cromarty  with  their 
creels  strapped  to  their  backs,  and  with 
a  sailor's  superstition  that,  if  they  were 
counted,  one  would  be  lost.  With  this 
dreadful  fate  hanging  about  them,  they 
yet  walked  single  file.  They  were  always 
21 


A  FORTUNATE  YOUTH 

counted.  And  they  had  a  fishwives'  dia- 
lect especially  fitted  to  this  crisis.  These 
tormented  and  violent  strangers  were 
important  as  a  kind  of  foreign  spectacle 
and  a  diversion;  not  as  fellow  creatures, 
certainly  not  as  individuals. 

The  keeper  of  the  public  house  was 
important  as  an  individual.  And  his 
house,  on  the  west  side  of  the  post  road, 
was  important.  But  Rubie  was  never,  in 
the  whole  course  of  his  life,  under  the 
roof  of  the  public  house,  because  at  the 
most  tender  years  this  little  lad  became  a 
teetotaler  —  and  this  to  the  great  disgust 
of  the  more  conservative  of  his  relatives, 
who  could  not  abide  a  taste  so  fancy  or  a 
will  so  weak  that  it  must  sign  a  pledge. 
Terrible  proud  it  was,  to  be  a  teetotaler, 
a  thing  of  the  south  entirely,  brought  up 
to  the  Highlands  by  the  Big  Beggar  Man, 
as  Thomas  Guthrie  was  called  in  those 
parts.  And  Rubie  was  his  victim.  Under 
22 


THE   BOY  AND   THE   HALF-CROWN 

this  taboo  he  missed  all  the  fine  talk  of 
the  men  from  the  hills  who  would  be 
visiting  the  public  house  for  a  dram. 
Yes,  there  would  be  fine  talk  in  that 
house,  which  was  a  kind  of  exchange  for 
the  news  of  the  countryside.  The  miss- 
ing of  it  was  a  great  loss,  and  is  still  to  be 
regretted. 

As  for  the  publican  himself,  he  could 
be  seen  in  church  —  the  Free  Kirk,  that 
was  at  the  other  end  of  the  village  from 
the  Established  Kirk.  Ruble,  sucking  a 
peppermint  in  the  pew  beside  his  mother, 
saw  him  every  Sunday.  He  was  the  pre- 
centor. He  had  a  wart  on  the  top  of 
his  head.  There  is  a  high  note  in  the 
tune  of  "Dundee,"  and  in  other  lofty 
tunes,  which  he  could  not  reach  and  to 
which  he  pointed  in  the  upper  air,  clear- 
ing his  own  throat  and  leaving  the  com- 
moners to  climb.  Little  Rubie  saw  the 
wart  and  the  uplifted  hand  and  heard 
23 


A  FORTUNATE  YOUTH 

the  coincident  cough,  sitting  by  his  dear, 
dear  mother  in  the  pew,  on  all  the  Sun- 
days of  his  youth. 

II 

For  nine  months  of  the  year  he  worked 
on  the  six  week-days  from  six  to  six,  and 
in  the  three  winter  months  he  went  to 
school.  We  worm  this  out  of  him.  Rubie 
kneeling  under  the  bellies  of  horses  in  the 
smithy  is  much  to  the  fore;  he  crowds 
little  Rubie  at  school.  And  yet,  now  that 
you  mention  it,  Rubie  at  school  had  ad- 
ventures, too.  There  was  a  teacher,  of 
course  —  you  would  guess  as  much;  and 
he  was  a  "stickit  minister,"  of  course, 
and  you  would  guess  that,  too.  He  wore 
a  white  cravat  and  a  silk  hat.  The 
boys  called  him  "Ability."  He  was 
not  married.  He  taught  forty  or  fifty 
children  the  three  R's,  and  algebra,  his- 
tory, Latin,  and  geography  —  "all  those 
24 


THE   BOY   AND   THE   HALF-CROWN 

things,  you  know, "  says  the  old  gentle- 
man rather  casually.  And  Rubie  was 
never  touched  by  the  tawse.  That  was  a 
five-fingered  leathered  thong.  Once, 
indeed,  he  was  rapped  by  the  bamboo 
cane  that  was  always  at  hand.  If  you 
will  believe  it,  that  blow  was  not  de- 
served; the  old  gentleman  says  so  him- 
self. He  claims  that  he  felt  on  that  day 
his  first  keen  sense  of  injustice.  We  are 
terribly  pleased  with  this  tale :  it  seems  to 
discover  for  us  the  origin  of  certain  inhi- 
bitions on  the  part  of  the  old  gentleman 
in  his  relation  to  his  own  children. 

In  those  days,  he  claims,  he  had  high 
marks.  And  dwell  upon  this,  —  he  drives 
us  to  it,  —  he  was  a  terrible  little  fighter ! 
Aye,  that  he  was.  New  boys  of  his  own 
age  must  have  horribly  regretted  their 
rash  entry  to  that  school,  where  the  in- 
vincible Rubie  must  be  met.  Not  only 
with  both  hands,  mark  you,  but  with  his 
25 


A  FORTUNATE  YOUTH 

left  hand  tied,  yes,  or  with  his  right  hand 
tied  —  with  any  or  all  of  the  classical 
handicaps,  the  battle  could  have  but  one 
issue,  and  —  "Well,  they  seemed  to  have 
a  good  deal  of  enthusiasm  about  me," 
says  the  old  gentleman,  in  whom  the  en- 
thusiasm obviously  survives. 

It  will  never  do  to  let  him  go  in  this 
uplifted  mood  with  his  face  of  false  hu- 
mility, —  you  see  that  for  yourself,  — 
and  we  make  him  tell  us  about  the  mur- 
der of  the  witch  in  the  West  Highlands. 
We  know  the  power  of  that  tale  to  bring 
him  down.  For  it  seems  that  on  a  day 
like  another  day  the  teacher  rapped  upon 
his  desk,  and  when  all  those  little  ruddy 
faces  looked  his  way,  he  blanched  them 
with  news.  He  had  had  a  letter  from  his 
brother  who  was  a  minister  in  the  West 
Highlands,  and  in  that  savage  country 
they  had  accused  a  poor  body  of  witch- 
craft; they  had  dug  a  hole  in  the  ground 
96 


THE   BOY   AND   THE   HALF-CROWN 

in  which  they  had  then  buried  the  poor 
woman  to  her  neck.  She  died.  It  was  a 
dreadful  thing,  the  master  told  his  child- 
ren, to  have  come  about  in  a  Christian 
country.  And  little  Rubie  felt  a  shadow 
fall  upon  him  and  a  tribal  shame.  To  this 
day  he  will  urge  that  such  doings  were 
unknown  in  the  East  Highlands. 

There  was  in  that  school  a  girl  called 
Euphemia.  This  was  her  name,  her  little 
indestructible  name,  not  worn  away  or 
dimmed  at  all  by  the  sixty-odd  years 
that  it  has  jingled  in  the  pocket  of  the  old 
gentleman's  memory.  And  she  was  the 
first  girl  ever  he  kissed.  He  remembers 
that,  too;  it  is  a  brilliant  little  memory 
not  dimmed.  All  old  gentlemen  —  don't 
doubt  it  —  have  these  bright  names  and 
these  little  bright  first  kisses  perfectly 
preserved  in  the  vest-pocket  of  their 
memories.  This  first  kiss  of  which  I  am 
telling  you  was  stolen,  though  Rubie 
27 


A  FORTUNATE  YOUTH 

thought  that  he  had  bought  it  with  a 
turnip.  He  gave  her  a  turnip  and  he  took 
the  kiss,  thinking  it  was  understood. 
But  no,  it  was  not  understood:  Euphe- 
mia  struck  him  for  his  daring,  with  the 
very  turnip,  and  he  saw  stars.  We  think 
the  fault  was  in  the  bribe  —  that  it  was 
inadequate;  but  the  old  gentleman  says, 
indeed  not.  A  sweet  turnip  right  out  of 
the  field  —  and  they  together  on  the  way 
from  school,  and  hungry,  too  —  was  a 
perfectly  adequate  bribe.  And  that  there 
was  a  farmer's  boy  in  school  who  was 
competing  for  a  prize  that  went  by  vote 
of  the  pupils,  and  he  used  dried  peas  for 
his  bribes.  He  was  always  bidding  for 
votes  with  peas,  and  Rubie  voted  for  him 
entirely  on  the  basis  of  peas. 

We  think  this  very  low  of  Rubie;  but 
perhaps,  we  think,  it  would  have  been 
different  had  the  peas  been  money.    Ru- 
bie then  would  have  detected  the  vice 
28 


THE   BOY  AND   THE  HALF-CROWN 

of  bribery.  "If  it  had  been  money,"  we 
ask  him,  "how  would  it  have  affected 
you?"  and  are  much  relieved  when  he 
claims  that  money  must  be  earned.  Peas, 
he  says,  are  different. 

Well,  there  you  have  him,  and  are  pre- 
pared for  the  following  tale.  From  a 
blacksmith  Rubie  has  become  a  ticket- 
agent  in  a  railway  station.  This  is  what 
he  was  next.  And  from  fourteen  or  so, 
he  has  become  sixteen  or  seventeen.  He 
sits  on  a  high  stool,  and  that  is  a  good 
way  to  be  taller  than  you  are.  And  he 
sells  tickets  out  of  an  office-window, 
for  the  North  Shore  and  Western.  Very 
important.  Everybody  knows  him.  And 
one  day  the  agent,  whose  character  never 
quite  emerges  to  us,  is  speaking  with  a 
youth  of  the  gentry  about  a  young  lady, 
also  gentry,  who  is  seen  by  them  and 
by  Rubie  to  go  into  the  waiting-room. 
And  the  young  buck  of  the  gentry  then 
29 


A  FORTUNATE  YOUTH 

told  Rubie  that  he  could  win  a  half- 
crown  if  he  would  kiss  that  young  lady. 

"I  got  immediately  off  my  stool,"  says 
the  old  gentleman,  "and  I  went  to  where 
she  stood,  —  where  they  could  see  her 
as  she  stood,  —  and  I  said  to  her,  would 
she  excuse  me,  but  that  I  had  been  told 
that  I  could  win  two-and-sixpence  if  she 
would  permit  me  to  kiss  her.  Immedi- 
ately she  stooped  down, "  —  Ah,  Rubie, 
that  she  had  to  stoop!  —  "and  she  laid 
her  arms  about  my  neck  and  kissed  me. 
And  so  I  got  the  two-and-six. " 

We  gape  at  the  old  gentleman  with  his 
"  immediately."  It  is  to  us  the  most  bald, 
incredible  tale.  How  could  it  be.^  But  it 
was,  says  he,  and  is  about  to  remember 
her  name,  when  we  tell  him  not  to.  " Did 
you  feel  hot  or  anything.'^"  we  ask.  But 
he  says  no,  not  at  all,  and  that  it  was  for 
him  purely  a  matter  of  business,  of  two- 
and-sixpence  —  a  half -week's  wages ! 
30 


THE  BOY   AND   THE   HALF-CROWN 

"How  about  her, "  we  ask ;  *' how  could 
she?" 

"Oh,  well,"  says  the  old  gentleman, 
"they  all  bought  their  tickets  of  me, 
they  all  knew  me!" 

The  logic  of  this  consequence  of  hab- 
itual ticket-buying  is  confusing  to  us,  but 
not  to  him:  he  looks  at  us  out  of  the 
old  ruddy  face  that  was  once  the  young 
ruddy  face  of  Rubie,  with  Rubie's  bland 
calm.  It  begins  to  be  evident  that  for  a 
half-crown  Rubie  might  go  far.  And  yet 
—  there  is  the  affair  of  the  penknife. 

An  important  person  is  known  to  have 
offered  Rubie  the  ticket-seller  a  tip  of 
two-and-six.  Rubie  refused  it.  And  the 
important  person  then  asked  a  favor  of 
Rubie.  You  know  how,  when  strong 
characters  refuse  our  favors,  we  are  im- 
pelled to  lean  upon  their  strength.  This 
important  person  yielded  to  that  im- 
pulse. He  gave  two-and-six  to  Rubie, 
31 


A  FORTUNATE  YOUTH 

begging  him  to  buy  for  him  a  knife  which 
he  would  claim  on  his  return  journey. 
Rubie  bought  the  knife;  he  carried  it  in 
his  pocket  as  a  trust  until  one  day,  long 
after,  when  he  guessed  that  the  knife  was 
his,  and  that  he  had  been  tipped. 

Ill 

There  was  a  reason  why  it  was  truly 
noble  of  Rubie  to  have  refused  a  half- 
crown  from  whatever  source,  for  he 
began  about  this  time  to  be  heavily  bur- 
dened with  family  cares,  having  con- 
tracted his  first  family.  And  this  was 
Alec. 

Alec  was  the  first  family  ever  Rubie 
had,  and  we  know  him  for  that  because 
upon  his  advent  Rubie  is  beset  by  finan- 
cial care.  Yes,  in  the  person  of  that  little 
brother  the  incubus  of  family  is  first 
settled  upon  Rubie.  And  this  is  to  dis- 
miss as  not  material  the  family  that  had 
32 


THE   BOY   AND   THE   HALF-CROWN 

been  established  for  him  in  the  letter 
from  London.  We  never  entertained 
that  family,  though  Rubie  did.  He  had 
paid  a  half-crown  for  it,  in  answer  to  an 
advertisement  in  a  long-forgotten  news- 
paper. "The  name  and  the  photograph 
of  your  future  wife,  and  the  number  of 
your  children,  revealed  for  two-and-six. " 
And  there,  sure  enough,  in  the  first  let- 
ter Rubie  remembers  ever  to  have  re- 
ceived, and  brought  all  the  way  from 
London  in  a  mail-pouch,  the  picture  of 
"Amy"  and  the  sum  of  three  children! 
Indeed,  he  did  not  at  all  dismiss  them: 
he  was  perfectly  agreeable  to  them.  But 
he  was  resigned  to  an  interval,  with  the 
photograph  of  Amy  for  solace.  And  in 
the  interval  there  was  Alec. 

This  little  boy  must  have  stolen  very 
softly  upon  Rubie,  who  cannot  remem- 
ber the  day  that  he  was  born,  or  any- 
thing about  him  very  compelling,  until 


A  FORTUNATE  YOUTH 

he  was  something  like  a  year  old.  "Our 
mother  cared  for  him  at  first,  of  course, " 
says  the  old  gentleman,  in  excuse  of 
Ruble's  long  indifference  to  Alec.  But 
once  assumed,  how  complete  was  his  de- 
votion to  his  family !  It  must  have  been 
then  that  Ruble  and  his  two  brothers 
recognized  Alec  for  a  minister  —  nothing 
less.  Yes,  there  were  they,  just  common 
bodies  altogether,  one  a  farm-hand  and 
one  a  carpenter's  apprentice  and  one  a 
ticket-seller,  who  received  upon  a  given 
day  some  sure  token  —  and  we  wonder 
what  it  can  have  been  —  that  little  Alec 
was  to  be  a  minister. 

With  this  illumination,  began  for  Jim- 
mie  and  Murdo  and  Ruble  those  finan- 
cial anxieties  that  are  the  true  mark  of 
the  family  state,  and  for  which  Ruble 
had  so  complete  a  vocation.  "Between 
us  we  were  to  care  for  him,  to  dress  him, 
to  teach  him  and  to  send  him  to  col- 
34 


THE   BOY   AND   THE   HALF-CROWN 

lege, "  says  the  old  gentleman,  of  the  only 
partnership  he  ever  entered.  Rubie  was 
to  teach  him!  Oh,  the  Hieland  pride 
of' it,  to  be  keeping  a  minister!  And  oh, 
the  terrible  cost  of  it,  with  wages  what 
they  were!  It  just  couldn't  be  done 
in  the  village  of  three  corners.  One  of 
them  must  go  away!  Rubie  it  was  who 
must  go  away.  He,  who  could  never  let 
his  darling  out  of  his  sight,  must  go  away. 
Terrible  it  was,  and  thrilling  too,  to  go 
away.  Other  boys  went  away,  to  Amer- 
ica and  to  Australia.  News  came  back  of 
them  that  they  prospered,  but  they  never 
came  back.  They  were  too  young  to  come 
back,  that  was  why.  An  old  man  came 
back  after  forty  years  in  America.  Forty 
years  in  America  he  was,  and  came  back 
loving  to  talk  and  to  answer  questions. 
The  old  gentleman  says  that  he  can  see 
him  still  among  a  group  of  lads  all  asking 
questions  about  the  Indians,  according 
35 


A  FORTUNATE  YOUTH 

to  Cooper,  and  about  slavery,  based 
upon  "Lena  Rivers." 

We  cannot  conceal  our  surprise  at 
"Lena  Rivers."  We  are  so  snobbish  that 
we  cannot  conceal  it.  But  the  old  gentle- 
man is  ready  to  retail  that  story  by 
Mary  Holmes  with  an  imperishable  ap- 
preciation. To  evade  Lena  Rivers  we 
have  to  acknowledge  that  we  have  met 
her  before.  No  need,  we  say,  to  repeat 
the  introduction;  it  is  only  that  we  had 
never  thought  to  meet  her  here  —  Egeria 
to  a  flock  of  Highland  lads,  and  pointing 
them  to  America. 

The  three  of  them,  says  the  old  gentle- 
man of  his  brothers  and  himself,  turned 
this  way  and  that  to  establish  the  fu- 
ture of  their  little  minister,  and  Ruble 
was  for  running  away  to  enlist.  Or  it  was 
Rannie  Fraser  made  the  plan,  for  he  was 
a  genius;  and  it  was  Ruble  bought  the 
tickets,  this  being  in  his  line;  and  it  was 
36 


THE   BOY  AND   THE   HALF-CROWN 

Ruble's  mother  spoked  the  wheel  of 
Ruble's  escape,  that  being  In  the  ma- 
ternal line.  The  way  she  did  It  was  this, 
and  the  way  of  It  was  so  simple  that  we 
are  dazzled  by  it:  she  took  Ruble  for  a 
walk.  On  the  very  day  of  the  flight,  and 
at  the  very  hour  for  which  Ruble  had  a 
ticket,  she  took  him  for  a  walk.  They 
just  walked  and  walked,  with  never  a 
word  to  the  point,  until  the  train  was 
gone,  and  the  other  lads  —  for  there 
were  others  —  were  gone  with  it.  And 
that  is  why  Rannle  Fraser  is  buried 
in  Egypt,  and  Ruble  is  still  catching 
trains. 

That  was  the  day  of  his  mother's  great 
success.  But  she  could  n't  keep  it  up  — 
you  must  guess  as  much,  and  that  one 
day  you  will  find  her  putting  Ruble's 
little  oddments  —  terribly  quaint  they 
are,  too  —  in  a  box  of  his  father's  mak- 
ing; and  that  Ruble  would  be  buying  a 
37 


A  FORTUNATE  YOUTH 

ticket  of  himself  for  a  world  far  wider  and 
far  stranger  than  the  world  we  know. 

I  understand  from  the  old  gentleman 
that  it  is  an  uncanny  thing  to  leave  home. 
There  is  a  day  that  you  need  not  look 
for  on  any  kindly  calendar.  They  could 
never  bear  to  print  the  date  of  that  day. 
And  there  is  an  hour  that  is  neither  morn- 
ing nor  afternoon  nor  any  known  hour, 
and  that  is  the  hour  they  see  you  off. 
You  had  not  known  that  the  hour  was  to 
be  as  it  is.  You  wonder  of  what  you  can 
have  been  thinking,  to  have  contracted 
on  such  a  day  to  meet  such  an  hour. 
But  there  you  are,  and  you  are  in  the 
train.  You  who  have  sold  tickets  for  so 
long,  thinking  light  of  it,  are  now  bound 
by  a  ticket  to  an  unlooked-for  adventure 
—  you  are  to  say  good-bye. 

The  family  is  there  and  the  neighbors 
are  there.  They  make  you  little  presents. 
You  look  at  them  from  the  open  window 
S8 


THE  BOY  AND  THE  HALF-CROWN 

of  the  carriage,  and  oh,  you  see  them! 
You  begin  to  bleed  internally,  and  you 
look  at  your  mother,  and  you  know  that 
a  sword  has  pierced  her  own  soul  also. 
You  look  at  little  Alec,  and  he  takes  his 
little  white  cravat  off  his  neck.  He  holds 
it  up  to  you  from  the  platform.  He  is 
makmg  you  a  present.  It  is  his  little 
present  to  you.  And  then  a  curious  thing 
happens :  the  train  begins  to  move.  They 
all  slip  away.  And  you  have  Alec's  cra- 
vat in  your  hand. 

Yes,  that  was  little  Alec.  We  know 
the  sort  of  child  he  was.  He  was  of  those 
immortal  children  who  die  and  who  live 
forever.  And  nothing  will  appease  them. 
You  may  name  ships  for  them  and  hos- 
pitals for  them  and  rescue  homes  for 
them  and  orphanages  for  them,  and  still 
they  will  be  pushing  their  lovers  with 
their  little  phantom  hands,  to  climb  by 
ladders  of  human  endeavor  to  fetch  the 
39 


A  FORTUNATE  YOUTH 

moon  for  them.  Before  they  die,  they  are 
so  tender  that  you  never  guess  the 
strength  of  them;  only  by  some  little  ges- 
ture or  an  aspect  they  warn  you,  while 
they  live,  of  all  they  mean  to  drive  you 
to.  In  their  lives  they  buy  you  with 
some  unforgettable  light  grace,  and  in 
their  deaths  they  use  the  thing  they  have 
bought.  There  was  Rubie  leaning  out  of 
a  car-window  and  Alec  buying  him  for- 
ever with  a  little  white  cravat.  And 
Rubie  thinking  himself  so  free  and  all, 
going  away  so  brave,  so  wealthy,  with 
five  pounds  in  his  pocket,  thinking  to 
meet  Indians  in  a  great  level  forest,  never 
guessing  yet  that  a  postman  was  so  soon 
to  trace  him  along  a  new  way  to  a  new 
door,  and  to  tell  him  that  Alec  was  dead 
and  had  bought  him  with  the  cravat. 
No,  Rubie  did  not  think  at  all  as  yet  of 
the  wonder  and  the  anguish  of  letters,  or 
of  the  feet  of  postmen. 


THE  BOY  AND  THE  DOLLAR 


When  the  old  gentleman  left  home, 
all  the  family  had  their  pictures  taken. 
That  was  their  way  of  keeping  him  com- 
pany, who  was  then  so  young,  on  his 
journeys  that  were  to  be  so  far.  These 
pictures  have  been  perfectly  faithful; 
they  keep  him  company  to  this  day. 
And  among  them  is  one  of  himself  look- 
ing lost.  The  old  gentleman  says  that 
this  lost  look  of  Rubie  is  all  due  to  the 
coat :  it  was  a  borrowed  coat,  his  own  not 
being  fine  enough  for  the  immortalities  of 
a  portrait,  and  it  was  too  big  for  him. 
Here,  we  claim,  is  where  Rubie  was  lost  — 
in  the  borrowed  coat.  For  the  young  man 
who  took  ship  at  Glasgow  was  named 
Robert;  he  was  aged  nineteen,  hailed 
41 


A  FORTUNATE  YOUTH 

from  the  East  Highlands,  and  had  all  the 
documents  of  Rubie  and  all  Ruble's  sav- 
ings in  his  pocket.  But  never  a  man  on 
the  Emergency  Exchange  Passenger  S.S. 
Venezia  had  sight  or  sound  of  Rubie. 
Robert  it  was. 

And  Robert  began  at  once  to  experi- 
ence the  most  extreme  adventures.  For 
overture  there  was  an  unparalleled 
tempest.  One  of  us  is  competitive  by  na- 
ture and  has  spent  the  prime  of  life  upon 
the  sea  looking  for  another  such  tempest, 
and  in  vain.  The  Venezia  was  twenty- 
one  days  crossing  the  Atlantic;  on  the 
seventh  day  out  the  sun  found  her  still 
off  the  coast  of  Gal  way.  Robert  exceeded 
in  another  sense  —  he  was  more  seasick 
than  you  or  I  can  ever  hope  to  be.  In  that 
cabin,  where  twenty  of  the  ship's  forty 
passengers  were  seasick,  Robert  was  the 
most  so. 

This  was  a  winter  of  a  voyage,  in  the 
42 


I 


THE  BOY  AND  THE  DOLLAR 

very  valley  of  the  waters.  A  lamp  hung 
from  the  ceiling  of  that  cabin.  A  steward 
with  punctual  cruelty  brought  in  food; 
and,  on  a  day  worse  than  other  days,  the 
news  that  the  captain  had  been  heard 
to  say  that  "She  could  not  stand  much 
more  of  this." 

Horrible  rumor !  The  one  of  us  who  is 
competitive  and  seafaring  remembers  — 
But  oh,  hush,  and  never  mind  —  do  lis- 
ten to  the  flute!  For  in  a  bunk  of  that 
cabin  on  that  ship  so  doomed  by  the  cap- 
tain and  the  steward,  there  is  a  man  who 
plays  the  flute!  "The  Flowers  of  Edin- 
burgh" —  there  they  float,  on  all  those 
days  of  storm  and  strangeness,  like  little 
straws  of  melody  for  Robert  to  catch  at; 
and  that  piping  is  a  magic  all  intact  be- 
tween him  and  the  whinings  of  the  little 
ship  and  the  sounds  of  the  great  sea. 

At  the  fag  end  of  that  long  voyage,  and 
to  the  old  gentleman's  quite  obvious 
43 


A  FORTUNATE  YOUTH 

present  satisfaction,  there  was  a  shortage 
of  rations.  You  got  your  hardtack  from 
a  cabin  on  deck  and  your  butter  from 
another  deck-cabin,  and  that  was  all  you 
got.  And  when  you  were  twenty-one 
days  out,  you  observed  by  the  sun  that 
you  were  sailing  east.  This  was  the 
"emergency  passenger  exchange " feature 
of  the  Venezia,  operating  on  the  grounds 
of  a  shortage  of  rations.  The  passengers 
were  to  be  landed  at  St.  John,  New 
Brunswick. 

Robert,  with  a  ticket  for  New  York  in 
his  pocket,  was  sent  down  the  ship's  lad- 
der to  the  soil  of  the  New  World.  The  old 
gentleman  claims  that  he  noted  at  once 
the  great  tides  in  that  bay.  You  see  how 
clever  he  was.  There  were  no  formalities 
in  landing,  but  the  authorities  laid  hands 
at  once  on  all  such  incomers,  requiring 
them  to  drill  to  meet  the  Fenians,  who 
had  just  raided  Indian  Island.  Our  wise 
44 


THE  BOY  AND  THE  DOLLAR 

Robert  evolved  the  idea  that  St.  John 
was  no  port  for  him;  and  he  who  went 
down  the  ship's  ladder  to  the  dock  in  the 
morning  was  to  be  seen,  later  in  the  day, 
looking  very  innocent,  and  climbing  down 
a  ladder  from  the  dock  to  the  ship's  deck. 
This  ladder  effect  was  due,  explains  the 
old  gentleman  with  something  of  Rob- 
ert's relish,  to  the  great  tides  in  that  bay. 

He  debarked  at  Windsor,  Nova  Scotia, 
meaning  to  go  from  there  inland  to  rela- 
tives of  his.  He  slept  the  night  in  this 
port,  the  jBrst  night  ever  he  slept  in  a 
hotel.  With  the  evening  he  felt  homesick, 
and  he  went  down  to  walk  by  the  sea. 
Now,  as  all  exiles  know,  a  stroll  by  the 
sea  is  the  most  appealing  cure  for  home- 
sickness—  and  the  worst.  "I  found  a 
little  marble  on  the  beach,"  says  the  old 
gentleman;  "I  picked  it  up  and  I  cher- 
ished it  —  then  and  for  long  after. " 

"How  do  you  mean  —  you  cherished 
45 


A  FORTUNATE  YOUTH 

it?"  we  ask,  thinking  to  pluck  out  the 
heart  of  this  emotional  word. 

But  the  old  gentleman  says,  "Oh,  I 
was  homesick!"  and  goes  back  to  his  bed 
in  the  tavern  with  a  marble  for  company 
in  his  pocket. 

In  the  morning  he  took  train  for  Truro. 
"I  had  just  money  enough  for  my  ticket," 
says  the  old  gentleman  briskly.  We  reg- 
ister a  falling  barometer,  but  the  weather 
will  not  alter;  it  is  springtime  in  Nova 
Scotia,  where  Robert  takes  note,  through 
a  car- window,  of  thrifty  farms.  It  is 
springtime  at  Halifax  Junction,  where 
Robert  is  to  wait  fasting.  But  the  ticket 
agent,  about  to  go  home  for  his  dinner, 
observes  him,  and  with  an  extraordinary 
intuition,  guesses  him  to  be  fresh  from 
the  old  country.  Yes,  and  from  within 
four  miles  of  the  agent's  old  home  Robert 
proves  to  be  —  for  which  cogent  reason 
he  is  asked  to  dinner. 
46 


THE  BOY  AND  THE  DOLLAR 

We  relax  —  he  is  not  to  go  hungry. 
We  tremble  when  he  makes  his  demure 
refusals;  we  are  thinking  that  the  ticket 
agent  will  take  him  at  his  word  and  leave 
him  to  starve  there  under  the  bright 
skies  of  Halifax  Junction  and  among 
those  notable  thrifty  farms.  But  no,  says 
the  old  gentleman,  "we  were  both  from 
the  Highlands,  and  that  was  manners. " 
Moreover,  he  assures  us,  feeling  our  ex- 
treme financial  agitation,  that  he  person- 
ally never  had  the  least  concern.  He  was 
always  able,  he  tells  us,  to  put  this  and 
that  together.  But  if  there  were  no  this 
or  that,  we  urge,  and  are  told:  "Well, 
then  I  would  just  have  to  devise!"  And 
he  tells  us  how,  on  the  train  out  from 
Halifax  Junction,  he  sold  his  silver  watch- 
chain. 

We  did  not  know  till  now  that  he  had 
a  silver  chain;  but  yes,  all  this  time  he 
has  been  wearing  a  chain  and  we  have  not 
47 


A  FORTUNATE  YOUTH 

observed  it.  A  present  from  his  brother 
Murdo  it  was;  it  went  round  his  neck 
and  hung  all  over  the  front  of  him.  We 
cannot  think  how  it  could  have  escaped 
us.  You  may  judge  for  yourself  of  the 
effect  of  it  when  I  tell  you  that  the  train 
conductor  coveted  it  and  bought  it  of 
him  for  ten  shillings.  Was  ten  shillings 
the  worth  of  it,  we  cynically  wonder. 
But  the  old  gentleman  is  perfectly  satis- 
fied :  ten  shillings  was  money  in  the  spring 
of  1866. 

From  Truro  he  bought  a  seat  in  a 
stage-coach  for  the  rest  of  his  journey.  A 
sixpence  remained.  The  friends  he  made 
in  the  stage-coach  named  the  farmsteads 
by  the  way,  and  he  with  sixpence  in  his 
pocket  rejoices  upon  this  —  that  these 
farms  are  tilled  by  their  owners. 

"It  was  a  shining  day  of  spring, "  says 
the  old  gentleman,  "very  bright,  and  by 
the  roadside  in  that  brilliant  light  I  saw 
48 


THE  BOY  AND  THE  DOLLAR 

a  little  church  standing  in  a  little  ceme- 
tery. And  I  thought,  'If  I  should  die  in 
this  country  I 'd  like  to  be  buried  here ! '" 
And  he  looks  at  us  with  smiling  and  em- 
barrassed eyes. 

We  think  that,  upon  the  whole,  and 
after  his  many  years  and  his  much  wan- 
dering, this  can  hardly  be  said  to  qualify 
as  a  typical  Celtic  premonition,  and  we 
are  haunted  rather  by  the  lone  sixpence. 
A  little,  too,  by  our  Robert's  bland  trust 
of  his  unknown  relatives. 

II 

The  coach  drops  him  at  the  very  door. 
He  knocks.  We  get  him  to  agree  that 
he  was  —  well,  apprehensive.  A  good 
woman  opens  the  door,  and  he  enters  the 
house.  He  sleeps  that  night  in  the  room 
of  an  absent  son  —  "  When  my  son  went 
away"  is  the  way  of  it,  and  the  going 
away  of  that  son  was  aboard  the  City  of 
49 


A  FORTUNATE  YOUTH 

Boston  of  the  Inman  Line.  Long  gone 
she  then  was,  and  never  heard  of  to  this 
day.  "  I  was  very  sorry  for  that  woman, ' ' 
says  the  old  gentleman,  who  remembers 
to  be  pitiful  after  all  these  years.  She 
was  a  good  woman,  he  tells  us,  but  the 
man  was  a  Morrisonian.  The  Morrisoni- 
ans,  it  appears,  were  a  sect  loving  to  ar- 
gue about  religion  —  a  subject  on  which 
Robert  had  never  yet  argued  or  heard 
an  argument.  This  new  thing  he  ob- 
served in  his  relative;  and  another  thing 
he  observed. 

He  went  with  his  uncle  for  a  morning 
stroll.  And  coming  to  a  tavern,  his  uncle 
said  he  'd  be  having  a  dram  if  he  had  a 
sixpence,  but  that  he  had  come  out  with 
none.    Had  Robert  a  sixpence? 

Robert,  as  we  know,  had  a  sixpence. 
Standing  by  the  bar,  he  paid  for  the 
dram ;  it  was  his  first  purchase  in  Amer- 
ica. Two  portions  were  poured  out  and 
50 


THE  BOY  AND  THE  DOLLAR 

his  uncle  drank  both,  Robert  being  a 
teetotaler, 

*'I  seemed  to  see  a  dark  shadow  com- 
ing over  the  faces  of  all  men,"  says  the 
old  gentleman,  making  a  gesture  with  his 
hand;  "I  can  see  it  coming  now. "  High- 
land custom  was  liberal  and  he  had  to 
give  the  sixpence;  but  he  claims  that  he 
can  still  remember  fishing  for  it  —  "a 
poor  little  thing  in  the  emptiness  of  my 
trousers  pocket. " 

He  then  felt,  he  says,  his  first  touch 
of  caution  —  of  disappointment  in  his 
fellow  men.  If  his  uncle  would  do  that, 
thought  he,  then  what  will  not  others  do? 

At  this  time  Robert  was  in  his  twen- 
tieth year. 

He  seems  not  to  have  slept  often  in  the 
room  of  "  my  son  who  went  away."  From 
these  relatives  he  went  on  to  others,  with- 
out, so  far  as  we  can  find,  a  sixpence  in 
his  pocket.  And  of  these  latter,  with 
51 


A  FORTUNATE  YOUTH 

whom  he  stayed  a  year  or  more,  the  old 
gentleman  would  have  us  know  their 
every  aspect  and  condition:  the  manner 
of  their  house  and  farm;  that  they  were 
unmarried  (a  brother  and  sister  they 
were);  that  she  did  Robert's  mending; 
that  they  had  long  prayers  of  a  morning 
and  evening ;  that  he  had  been  a  passion- 
ate fiddler  until  this  idolatrous  frenzy 
was  repented  of,  when  he  put  his  heel 
through  his  darling  fiddle.  There  were 
the  awesome  remains  of  the  sacrifice  to 
be  seen  about  the  house  —  very  afflict- 
ing. And  that,  so  far  as  Robert  was 
concerned,  they  grudged  him  nothing  — 
from  the  never-failing  farthing  they  gave 
him  of  a  Sunday,  that  he  might  feel  no 
shame  when  the  Elder  passed  the  plate, 
to  the  offer  they  made  him  at  the  last, 
that  if  he  would  stay  with  them  he  should 
have  the  farm. 

Often  we  have  heard  tell  of  that  farm, 
52 


THE  BOY  AND  THE  DOLLAR 

but  the  farthing  is  all  new  to  us.  We  are 
terribly  impressed  by  that  farthing  —  it 
is  a  little  lantern  shining  upon  our  own 
past,  by  which  we  see  a  group  of  ourselves 
more  grown  up  than  we  now  are,  more 
finely  dressed,  about  to  go  to  church,  and 
much  approved  by  the  old  gentleman, 
who  detains  us  long  enough  to  fish  a  coin 
from  his  pocket  —  and  this  is  for  the  one 
of  us  who  is  a  guest. 

"For  the  collection,"  says  the  old 
gentleman  benignly,  and  sure  that  all  is 
plain.  Now,  indeed,  by  the  light  of  the 
farthing  all  is  plain :  we  know  now  where 
he  learned  that  gesture,  and  that  it  is  the 
very  best  of  the  gestures  of  that  never-to- 
be-forgotten  gentleness  of  long  ago.  It  is 
strange,  but  that  farthing  has  enslaved 
us  for  the  Francie  Henrys  —  this  was 
their  name  —  more  than  all  their  offers 
of  the  farm. 

Robert  stayed  in  the  house  of  the 
53 


A  FORTUNATE  YOUTH 

broken  fiddle  for  more  than  a  year,  and 
these  things  happened  to  him :  — 

He  did  not  fall  in  love.  (The  old  gen- 
tleman does  not  volunteer  this,  but  af- 
firms it  with  a  kind  of  startled  surprise, 
under  cross-examination.)  No.  He  be- 
gan to  shave,  which  he  should  have  done 
before. 

He  went  to  school,  where  he  made 
friends;  and  he  taught  school,  where  he 
made  friends. 

He  read  a  book  about  the  Christian 
brotherhood,  and  was  so  uplifted  by  it 
that  he  acclaimed  the  very  first  man  he 
met  upon  the  highway  as  a  Christian 
brother.  He  can  still  see  himself  walking 
abroad  in  a  bright  sunlight,  gaining  upon 
a  man  of  whom  he  said  to  himself,  in  his 
heart,  "If  he  is  a  Christian  he  is  my 
brother ! "  And  he  was,  a  Christian  and  a 
carpenter,  both  of  which  facts  were  forth- 
coming and  satisfactory.  They  walk 
54 


THE  BOY  AND  THE  DOLLAR 

away  together,  spiritually  arm  in  arm. 
We  seem  to  see  them  walking  away  to- 
gether in  that  morning  light,  until  sud- 
denly, when  they  are  very  small  and  far 
away,  we  laugh  —  because  we  remember 
where  we  have  seen  them  before,  and  it 
was  in  the  "Pilgrim's  Progress." 

Robert  joined  the  church  in  these  days, 
whether  before  the  dawn  of  his  day  of 
Christian  brotherhood  or  after  — at  least 
upon  a  glimmer  of  that  same  illumina- 
tion. Because,  he  was  wondering,  did  he 
dare,  who  was  so  wicked,  aspire  to  such 
a  privilege,  when  his  eye  fell  upon  Jim- 
mie  Cameron,  who  sat  between  himself 
and  the  minister.  Now  Robert  knew  his 
Jimmie,  and  thinks  he  to  himself,  "I  'm 
as  good  as  Jimmie  Cameron  anyway!" 
Upon  which  conclusion  he  joined  the 
church. 

With  the  earning  of  his  school-term  he 
bought  a  suit  of  clothes  —  a  tailor  made 
55 


%' 


A  FORTUNATE  YOUTH 

them  —  and  an  overcoat.  Do  not  mini- 
mize these  adventures. 

And  among  the  many  letters  got  by 
Robert  from  the  old  country,  be  prepared 
for  the  fateful  letters  —  so  like  other  let- 
ters when  the  postman  brings  them  to  the 
door,  so  different  when  you  release  them ! 
Little  Alec  is  dead,  writes  his  mother. 
And  his  brother  Murdo  writes  that  little 
Alec  is  dead,  but  that,  if  Robert  will  send 
on  the  passage-money  for  Jimmie,  that 
brother  will  come  to  the  new  country, 
where  he  will  make  a  wage  that  will  edu- 
cate Robert.  For  Robert  is  to  be  the  min- 
ister, now  that  little  Alec  is  dead. 

Robert  sends  on  what  money  he  has. 
It  is  a  good  thing,  is  n't  it,  that  he  has 
joined  the  church  and  has  bought  a  new 
suit  of  clothes  —  he  that  is  so  suddenly 
called  to  the  ministry!  And  about  the 
passage-money  the  old  gentleman  tells  us 
that,  when  it  came  to  hand  in  that  High- 
56 


THE  BOY  AND  THE  DOLLAR 

land  village,  it  was  just  in  time  to  bury 
Jimmie.  We  look  at  those  photographs, 
—  of  Alec,  so  small  and  wise,  being  big- 
ger than  he  was  on  a  footstool,  and  of 
Jimmie,  so  young,  so  rustic,  so  debonair, 
so  Scotch  bonnie,  —  and  we  wonder  how 
Robert  ever  kept  his  faith  in  savings. 
But  he  did,  and  Murdo  writes  that,  if 
only  enough  can  be  saved  for  the  pas- 
sage, he  himself  will  come  to  earn  the 
makings  of  the  minister. 

The  old  gentleman  will  not  have  it  that 
Robert  was  shattered.  But  there  he  is, 
moving  on  and  away  from  that  Nova 
Scotian  village  where  you  get  sad  letters 
and  learn  that  the  young  may  die.  He 
will  not  stay  there  —  no,  not  for  a  farm. 

Ill 

The  old  gentleman,   when   we  have 
come  to  this  point  in  the  things  he  re- 
members, remembers  that  he  had  for  a 
57 


A  FORTUNATE  YOUTH 

long  time  a  wish  to  be  a  toll-keeper.  He 
saw  himself,  he  says,  tipped  back  in  a 
chair  and  reading  a  book.  When  he  would 
be  hailed  in  his  dream  by  a  traveler,  he 
would  come  to  earth  and  collect  the  toll ; 
but  that  well-trained  traveler  would  pass 
on,  and  he  would  read  his  book  again. 

It  is  plain  to  see,  when  this  aspiration 
is  recalled,  that  it  is  not  all  dead.  "It 
would  certainly  be  a  pleasant  life,  "muses 
the  old  gentleman.  But  we  cannot  leave 
him  there,  lolling  at  the  gate  of  a  dream, 
while  Robert  waits  to  get  away,  and  the 
Francie  Henrys,  having  packed  his  box 
with  dainties,  suffer  the  moment  of  fare- 
well. 

Robert  takes  ship  from  St.  John  for 
Boston.  Their  first  call  was  at  Eastport, 
Maine.  It  was  a  jewel  of  a  morning,  a 
late  September  morning,  and  it  was,  he 
says,  as  if  he  had  never  seen  an  autumn 
day  before.  He  looks  at  that  enchanting 
58 


THE  BOY  AND  THE  DOLLAR 

shore.  And  he  writes  a  letter  to  his  father 
all  about  the  *'  Country  of  the  Yankees, " 
and  that,  however  shrewd  they  are  (these 
were  the  cliches  of  that  September  day 
in  1867),  he,  Robert,  knows  how  many 
pence  there  are  to  the  sixpence! 

Having  reassured  himself  by  the  touch 
of  the  written  word  of  his  pebbles  and  his 
sling,  he  hangs  upon  the  rail  to  watch  the 
landing.   And  Miss  Hare  comes  aboard. 

Of  the  extraordinary  personality  of 
Miss  Hare  I  will  say  at  once  that  the  old 
gentleman  has  never  since  that  day  seen 
a  well-dressed  woman  but  he  has  thought 
of  Miss  Hare.  She  was  then  for  him,  and 
is  to-day,  the  glass  of  fashion  and  the 
mould  of  form.  And  she  was  more  — 
just  as  Titian  knows  that  there  is  more 
than  one  woman  in  a  beautiful  woman 
and  paints  her  two  upon  the  fountain's 
brim.  Well,  here  comes  Miss  Hare,  and 
she  moves  in  a  little  company. 
59 


A  FORTUNATE  YOUTH 

"She  had  a  novel  manner,"  says  the 
old  gentleman;  "it  was  the  United  States 
manner.  Her  carriage  was  very  striking 
and  different  from  the  carriage  of  the 
Provinces.  Her  dress  was  peculiar  to  me : 
her  skirt  was  one  of  those  skirts  cut  in 
four  panels  from  nothing  [this  nothing 
would  seem  to  have  been  her  waist]  to  a 
good  flare ;  it  was  gray  with  a  sheen  on  it. 
It  was  not  very  wide.  I  looked  at  that 
dress  as  if  I  were  going  to  make  another 
like  it.  She  was  a  slim  tall  girl  with  gray 
eyes.  Her  face  was  not  round.  So  attrac- 
tive she  was  and  so  novel,  that  any  young 
man  would  have  looked  at  her  more  than 
once  or  twice."  And  the  old  gentle- 
man says  further  that  in  any  country  he 
would  have  been  interested  in  the  men 
and  women,  and  most  particularly  in  the 
young  girls. 

"We  sailed  along,"  he  tells  us,  "and  I 
looked  at  her  from  time  to  time.  She  had 
60 


THE  BOY  AND  THE  DOLLAR 

no  interest  in  me."  We  note  this,  and 
we  note  further  that,  by  eliminations  of 
which  the  old  gentleman  can  still  give  the 
count,  beginning  in  the  saloon  where  the 
attendants  withdraw  singly,  to  last  with- 
drawals on  the  deck,  Robert  is  left  alone 
at  last  with  Miss  Hare.  They  sit  by  the 
rail  in  the  autumn  night,  while  the  ship's 
bell  strikes  the  hour.  Eight  bells,  and 
Miss  Hare  is  still  telling  Robert  the  story 
of  "The  Minister's  Wooing."  Yes,  that 
is  the  tale  she  told  him  —  the  so  fashion- 
able and  so  beautiful  and  so  affable  Miss 
Hare.  We  do  rejoice  that  Robert,  besides 
his  new  suit,  had  bought  an  overcoat. 

There  was  a  maiden  lady  on  that  boat, 
and  she  was  a  distant  relative  of  Robert. 
How  came  she  to  know  of  the  condescen- 
sions of  Miss  Hare?  And  why  must  she 
next  morning  upbraid  him  for  them? 
"Don't  be  thinking  to  lift  your  eyes  so 
high,"  she  tells  Robert;  and  that  Miss 
61 


A  FORTUNATE  YOUTH      V*F^" 

Hare  would  never  take  a  serious  thought 
of  a  poor  young  man  like  him !  The  old 
gentleman,  in  recalling  this  would-be  as- 
sassin, has  the  customary  injured  air  of  the 
man  who  has  been  accused  of  more  seri- 
ous intentions  than  he  has  entertained; 
and  you  may  see  to  this  day,  on  the  mar- 
gin of  his  bright  memory  of  this  super 
encounter,  the  print  of  an  alien  thumb. 

It  was  late  afternoon  when  Robert, 
landing  in  Boston,  paid  the  classic  dollar. 
You  paid  a  dollar  in  those  days  for  the 
privilege  of  entering  the  United  States. 
The  old  gentleman  makes  gestures  at  this 
point  —  impassioned  gestures,  calculated 
to  startle  our  attention.  We  must  know, 
if  he  can  make  us  know,  the  value  of  what 
Robert  got  for  his  dollar;  and  his  emotion 
quite  visibly  beats  against  the  cage  of  his 
control  while  hetells  us  that  thirteen  bat- 
tles were  fought  within  sight  of  Stirling 
Castle,  —  all  of  them  for  Liberty,  —  and 


•  *i 


JV4>i* 


'iS?r"^^fe**BdY'*AND  THE  POLLAR 

^  ''here  you  are,  in  September  of  1867,  buy- 
.tr  ing  Liberty  for  a  dollar! 

We  are  the  friends  of  the  bridegroom 
and  we  make  our  little  gestures  of  appre- 
ciation of  that  joy.  We  do  not  minimize 
it,  but  we  know  that  Robert  is  to  be  a 
long  time  in  America  savoring  the  fruits 
of  that  dollar,  and  we  want  to  hear  at 
once  the  tale  of  the  famous  necktie  bought 
in  Boston.  Before  we  leave  Boston  we 
must  buy  him  that  tie. 

The  old  gentleman  explains  that  the 
,  tie  was  bought  in  Michigan,  and  for  this 
or  for  other  reasons,  he  leaves  Boston 
that  very  afternoon,  traveling  all  night 
to  Albany  —  shut  up  in  the  prison  of  the 
train  from  the  wonders  of  these  United 
States.  A  late  thunder-shower  beat  upon 
that  train  and  awed  him,  who  was  not 
bred  to  such  storms.  And  a  fellow  pass- 
enger came  and  sat  beside  him,  speaking 
of  the  Deity  and  of  the  things  of  Friend- 

63 

I 


k 


i5f 


A  FORTUNATE  YOUTH 

ship.  How  kind  that  was,  we  think;  and 
we  think  we  see  him  sitting  all  lonely  in 
that  unfamiliar  clamor,  until  this  name- 
less man,  caught  by  some  appealing  as- 
pect of  youth,  casts  a  bridge  across  to 
that  isolation. 

"He  told  me, "  says  the  old  gentleman, 
"that  I  must  learn  to  make  a  friend  of 
God  and  to  be  friendly  to  my  fellow  man; 
then  I  would  never  lack  for  friends." 

With  the  morning  he  was  in  Albany, 
and  all  that  day  —  he  was  twenty- 
four  hours  between  Albany  and  Toledo 
—  he  marveled  at  the  United  States. 
There  through  the  car-window  was  the 
Mohawk  Valley,  there  were  the  clean 
fields,  the  corn  in  shock  and  the  colored 
pumpkins,  the  towns  with  their  classic 
names,  and  everywhere,  in  town  and 
field  and  woodland,  the  bright  last  em- 
bers of  our  year.  First  adventures, 
claims  the  old  gentleman,  not  only  live 
64 


THE  BOY  AND  THE  DOLLAR 

accurately  in  memory,  but  they  shine. 

Robert  saw  hunters  come  aboard  the 
train  with  braces  of  rabbits;  free  as  air, 
they  were,  in  these  United  States,  who 
in  the  old  country  might  well  have  been 
in  prison  for  poaching;  and  he,  who  had 
never  poached  or  had  a  heart  for  shoot- 
ing, yet  felt  a  sense  of  liberation.  There 
was  a  boy  aboard  that  train  who  was 
called  the  Butcher  Boy;  he  sold  nuts  that 
were  called  beechnuts.  He  had  been  in 
the  Civil  War.  Robert  ate  his  nuts,  while 
he  listened  to  his  adventures,  and  was 
very  much  in  the  United  States. 

In  the  old  Toledo  station  he  is  laughed 
at  by  a  girl  because  he  calls  for  a  tart  that 
is  a  pie.  "Well,  then,  that  pie."  "Alloi 
it?"  mocking  youth  asks  of  youth.  And 
youth  with  dignity  inquires  as  to  the 
custom :  what  portion  is  it  customary  to 
sell?  And  buys  the  fourth,  as  per  specifi- 
cations. 

65 


A  FORTUNATE  YOUTH 

IV 

Fortified  by  this  customary  section  of 
pie,  and  by  more,  we  trust,  that  the  old 
gentleman  has  forgotten,  Robert  went  on 
from  Toledo  to  a  town  in  Michigan.  He 
had  an  uncle  in  that  town,  and  we  know 
how  uncles  draw  him.  This  one  was  of 
the  nobler  sort.  "He  was  brusque," 
says  the  old  gentleman,  "but  he  was 
never  brusque  to  me. "  And  here  Robert 
found  his  first  job  in  America  —  he  sold 
.wild  turkeys  for  Thanksgiving.  Here, 
too,  he  bought  the  necktie. 

There  was  a  young  lady  among  his  rel- 
atives who  loathed  his  tie  and  said  so. 
How  pliable  he  was,  you  may  guess, 
when  I  tell  you  that  he  agreed  to  buy  an- 
other. And  how  he  suffered,  you  should 
know,  when  he  was  asked  four  shillings 
for  the  new  one.  Now  Robert  knew  — 
you  remember  he  said  so  —  how  many 
66 


THE  BOY  AND  THE  DOLLAR 

pence  there  are  to  the  sixpence,  and  he 
knew  besides  how  shrewd  the  Yankees 
are,  and  that  you  must  never  give  what 
you  are  asked.  So  he  just  made  a  feint  of 
moving  away  from  the  counter.  And  the 
clerk  called  after  him,  "What  will  you 
give  for  it?  "  Aha,  thinks  Robert,  thrilled 
to  his  marrow  by  this  encounter  of  Greek 
with  Greek;  and  he  says  that  he  will  give 
sixty  cents.  Which  he  does. 

The  tie  is  much  admired,  and  its  finan- 
cial history  is  related,  with  Robert  staged 
to  centre,  outwitting  the  Shrewd  Yankee. 
"But  it  was  only  fifty  cents  he  asked 
you ! "  cries  the  young  lady.  For  in  Mich- 
igan in  those  days  there  were  just  twelve 
and  a  half  cents  to  the  shilling.  You  see 
for  yourself  how  hard  it  was  in  1867  to 
outwit  the  Shrewd  Yankees. 

Well,  you  need  not  always  be  outwit- 
ting them.  With  a  teacher's  diploma  in 
your  pocket,  you  ride  out  into  the  au- 
67 


A  FORTUNATE  YOUTH 

tumn  air  and  you  pick  up  your  living  by 
the  roadside.  It  is  a  November  day ;  you 
borrow  your  uncle's  pony;  above  your 
necktie  you  look  with  your  young  eyes  to 
right  and  left  for  your  fortune ;  and  when 
you  have  ridden  seven  miles  into  the 
country,  you  see  a  brick  school-house  at 
a  four  corners.  You  hail  a  man  and  ask  is 
it  a  vacant  school;  and  it  is.  And  if  you 
will  just  be  going  to  a  farmhouse  at  the 
corners,  you  will  be  hearing  something 
to  your  advantage. 

You  go.  And  that  very  night  you  meet 
with  the  School  Board.  There  is  some- 
thing about  you  that  dazzles  them  —  it 
is  a  perfect  case  of  Lohengrin,  with  a 
pony  for  swan.  You  are  to  teach  four 
months ;  you  are  to  be  paid  one  hundred 
and  twenty  dollars,  and  you  are  to  *'  board 
round." 

Thus  Robert  came  to  anchor  for  a  win- 
ter of  which  the  old  gentleman  says  that 
68 


THE  BOY  AND  THE  DOLL.\R 

there  are  no  bitter  memories,  unless  of 
the  chill  of  the  guest-rooms  where  he 
boarded  round.  All  those  rooms  were 
cold.  But  there  was  food  in  abundance; 
there  was  firewood  for  jolly  big  black 
stoves;  there  were  boys  and  girls  slipping 
along  in  sleighs  between  the  snow  and  the 
moon,  warm  and  laughing  in  the  straw. 
There  were  spelling-bees,  and  this  is  why 
our  elders  are  so  infallible.  And  of  a  Sun- 
day there  was  a  meeting  of  Spiritualists 
in  the  schoolhouse,  and  there  was  much 
post-war  talk  of  Spiritualism  in  that  ro- 
bust community.  But  Robert,  who  came 
of  a  race  that  sees  ghosts,  and  whose  feel- 
ing for  the  ghostly  was  of  a  deep  and  Cel- 
tic dye,  was  not  intrigued  by  these  facile 
occult  adventures. 

He  was  busy  with  his  school,  and  he 

was  busy  trying  to  correct  his  accent. 

He  dearly  wished  to  be  like  the  people 

among  whom  he  lived,  and  particularly 

69 


A  FORTUNATE  YOUTH 

he  wished  to  be  like  the  Pennsylvania 
Dutch.  He  aimed,  it  seems,  to  please. 
Having  aimed  for  four  months  at  this 
unique  mark,  and  spring  having  rounded 
out  his  school-term,  there  is  a  stroke  of  the 
bell,  and  Robert  might  infer,  we  claim, 
that  he  has  hit  the  bull's-eye.  For  on  the 
day  of  the  closing  of  school  all  the  pupils 
—  there  were  sixty  pupils  —  kissed  their 
teacher. 

The  old  gentleman,  to  prove  this  phe- 
nomenon, produces  a  sheaf  of  tintypes. 
There  they  are,  boys  and  girls,  and  all 
with  a  tinge  of  rose  upon  their  cheeks 
to  prove  that  they  kissed  their  teacher. 
One  of  these  is  little  Johnny  Skinner; 
and  oh,  he  looks  like  Alec !  All  the  four 
months  of  that  winter  he  looked  like 
Alec,  and  here  is  the  picture  of  him  after 
fifty  years  —  still  looking  like  Alec,  the 
two  of  them  looking  alike  to  this  day. 
Outside  the  schoolhouse  there  is  the 
70 


THE  BOY  AND  THE  DOLLAR 

most  beautiful  spring  weather.  And  in 
that  beautiful  weather  there  flourishes 
the  most  beautiful  larch  tree.  The  im- 
mortal beauty  of  this  tree,  and  a  memory 
of  Robert  worshiping  it,  are  the  last  of 
the  old  gentleman's  memories  of  the  four 
corners.  " xA.nd  how, "  he  muses,  "  can  we 
have  had  such  golden  weather  in  a  Mich- 
igan spring!" 

However  that  may  be,  and  we  con- 
fess to  a  sophisticated  wonder  ourselves, 
Robert  makes  back  to  his  uncle  in 
golden  weather,  with  gold  in  his  pocket 
and  with  a  golden  word  in  his  mouth. 
For  it  is  in  this  spring  that  he  begins 
to  sing  about  college.  He  is  going  to 
college. 

"I  am  saying  good-bye,"  he  tells  his 
uncle,  "because  I  am  going  to  college." 
For  this  song  is  the  song  of  migration. 

And  his  uncle  says,  with  exactly  the 
fervor  of  the  Francie  Henrys  when  they 
71 


A  FORTUNATE  YOUTH 

offered  him  the  farm,  that  he  will  edu- 
cate Robert  for  a  doctor. 

"But  I  mean  to  be  a  minister!"  says 
Robert. 

And  his  uncle  looks  at  him.  Presently 
he  asks,  does  Robert  want  to  know  what 
he  thinks  of  him?  And  he  tells  him. 
Now  I  know  that  you  want  to  know 
what  his  uncle  thought  of  Robert;  but  I 
cannot  just  tell  you  with  the  old  gentle- 
man listening  in.  For  he  thought  that 
Robert  was  a  fool  of  a  classic  type. 

And  that  was  the  end  of  uncles  so  far 
as  Robert  was  concerned,  and  of  all  rela- 
tives whatsoever,  except  those  unforgot- 
ten  ones  who  write  letters  from  the  East 
Highlands  and  who  think  it  just  gran'  to 
be  a  minister.  With  the  pictures  of  these 
and  the  tintypes  of  his  sixty  pupils  Rob- 
ert moves  forever  out  of  the  zone  of 
uncles. 

But  of  this  latter  one  the  old  gentle- 
72 


THE  BOY  AND  THE  DOLLAR 

man  thinks  long,  sighing  at  last  and  say- 
ing, "He  was  brusque,  but  he  never  was 
brusque  with  me. " 

"How  fortunate  you  were!"  we  tell 
our  old  gentleman. 


THE    WAGES   OF   YOUTH 


Detroit  in  1868,  says  the  old  gentle- 
man, was  different.  Many  a  true  De- 
troiter  has  told  us  this,  and  we  know  by 
hearsay  of  that  vanished  golden  age. 
Robert  at  twenty-one  was  there  in  time. 
In  that  far  superior  Detroit  he  set  about 
to  earn  a  living,  and  this  is  what  offered. 
He  might  have  been  a  baggage-man,  had 
he  not  explained  that  he  must  leave  in 
September  to  enter  college.  But  for  this 
indiscretion  again,  he  might  have  been  a 
rough  carpenter  working  for  the  govern- 
ment in  the  lighthouses  along  the  Lake 
shore.  And  at  last  he  signed  up  as  purser 
aboard  the  Sea  Bird,  plying  between 
Cleveland  and  Toledo.  With  Robert 
waiting  to  board  her  as  purser,  the  Sea 
Bird  burned  to  the  water's  edge. 
74 


THE  WAGES  OF  YOUTH 

Without  a  harsh  word  for  Detroit, 
Robert  went  west  to  Chicago.  And  al- 
most at  once  he  begins  to  make  that  city 
over.  Many  a  thing  he  did  for  Chicago 
before  he  became  a  minister,  and  this  is 
the  first:  he  worked  for  a  month  on  the 
new  directory. 

The  critical  cases  were  given  to  Robert, 
claims  the  old  gentleman,  because  he  had 
a  way  with  him.  With  this  way  of  his 
he  came  to  be  in  strange  houses  —  the 
houses  of  foreigners  who  suspected  the 
uses  of  the  census,  the  houses  of  irritable 
housewives  loath  to  leave  their  work. 
And,  on  a  day,  the  house  of  a  woman  in  a 
decent  dress  who  bids  him  be  seated.  He 
takes  out  his  little  book  to  list  the  inhabi- 
tants of  that  house,  and  he  observes  as 
they  pass  the  door  that  they  look  in  at 
him,  and  that  they  are  girls.  Two  of 
them,  more  curious  than  the  others,  come 
in  and  eye  him  closely. 
76 


A  FORTUNATE  YOUTH 

"When  the  madame  told  them  what  I 
wanted,"  says  the  old  gentleman,  "and 
that  I  had  come  to  list  them,  they  laugh- 
ed and  rushed  away.  And  then  she  said 
to  me,  'Young  man,  this  is  no  place  for 
you.'  She  said  it  very  kindly,  too. " 

Such  segregations  were  new  to  Robert, 
who  pondered  them  on  that  day  of  '68; 
but  the  old  gentleman  at  this  end  of  time 
thinks  rather  of  that  maternal  kindness 
in  that  least  likely  place. 

Having  put  Chicago,  red  lights  and  all, 
upon  the  map,  young  Robert  enters  a 
box-factory,  and  here  he  meets  with  his 
first  machine.  There  was  such  a  lack  of 
aflSnity  between  him  and  a  machine  as 
cannot  be  put  in  words.  We  make  out 
that  there  was  no  heart  in  that  machine. 
For  a  week  he  took  away  the  boards  it 
threw  him  with  an  incredible  punctuality 
and  without  let  or  breathing.  The  heels 
of  his  one  pair  of  shoes  wore  away  in  the 
76 


THE  WAGES  OF  YOUTH 

service  of  that  machine,  and  still  without 
ceasing  he  slaved.  Until  on  the  morning 
of  the  sixth  day  he  just  could  nt  go  to 
work.  He  could  tit.  He  sacrificed  that 
blood-money,  packed  his  carpet-bag,  and 
set  out  on  a  country  road  to  the  south  of 
Chicago.  There  was  room  on  that  spring 
day  in  the  prairie  lands  about  the  city  of 
Chicago  for  the  escape  of  a  lad  from  a 
box-machine. 

Young  like  that,  and  with  your  carpet- 
bag in  your  hand  and  the  prairies  all 
before  you,  you  cannot  do  better  than 
trust  to  a  man  with  a  wagon.  A  taxi 
could  never  do  as  much  for  you  —  never. 
Seated  by  the  man  in  his  wagon  you 
tell  him  what  you  need  and  he  tells 
you  where  it  may  be  had.  At  the  cross- 
roads it  is  to  be  had,  and  he  drops  you 
there. 

Sure  enough,  you  sleep  that  night  un- 
der a  farmer's  roof,  —  the  roof  provided 
77 


A  FORTUNATE  YOUTH 

for  you  by  the  man  with  the  wagon,  — 
and  this  in  spite  of  the  judgment  passed 
upon  you  by  the  farmer's  wife,  which 
is  adverse.  She  is  heard  to  tell  her  hus- 
band that  you  are  no  farm-hand,  but 
just  a  shop-clerk.  Could  a  taxi  driver 
have  put  you  to  bed  in  that  house.'' 

Because  of  a  way  he  had  with  a  given 
horse,  a  poor  temperamental  mare,  Rob- 
ert worked  all  summer  on  that  farm. 
And  the  day  he  remembers  well  was  the 
fourth  of  July.  Yes,  and  the  day  after. 
Very  early  on  the  morning  of  the  fourth 
of  July  the  farmer  and  his  wife  and  the 
other  hired  hand  —  for  there  was  an- 
other —  went  away  to  Chicago.  They 
went  to  celebrate  the  Fourth,  and  the 
hired  hand  wore  Robert's  best  trousers. 
He  was  an  Austrian,  and  bigger  than 
Robert  by  a  good  deal ;  but,  never  mind, 
he  had  begged  the  loan  of  the  trousers 
and  they  just  had  to  fit. 
78 


THE  WAGES  OF  YOUTH 

Robert  had  a  long,  delicious,  solitary 
day  cultivating  corn.  Not  being  an  ex- 
perienced American,  he  knew  no  better 
than  to  work  on  the  Fourth  of  July.  No 
bigger  than  usual,  —  smaller  indeed  than 
usual,  —  we  see  him  at  the  very  heart  of 
the  wide  prairie  summer,  busy  in  the 
corn,  and  the  odd  sound  we  hear  is  him- 
self singing.  He  sang  "Nancy  Lee"  all 
day,  says  the  old  gentleman,  compla- 
cently; he  had  just  learned  to  sing  it. 
And  late  that  night,  when  the  farmer  re- 
turned, the  Austrian  was  not  with  him. 

The  trousers ! 

On  the  morning  of  the  fifth,  Robert  on 
the  temperamental  mare  set  out  to  find 
his  trousers.  "What,  in  all  Chicago?" 
we  ask.  But  no,  Robert  thought  he  would 
know  where  to  look:  he  would  look  in  the 
saloons.  You  see  how  wise  he  was  for  a 
teetotaler.  And  in  the  very  first  saloon, 
on  the  outskirts  of  the  town,  there  were 
79 


A  FORTUNATE  YOUTH 

indeed  the  trousers.  They  were  cleaning 
out  the  saloon,  after  the  wreckage  of  the 
Fourth.  You  are  to  remember  what  they 
were  —  trousers  of  a  very  special  de- 
cency, and  Robert  meaning  to  go  to  col- 
lege and  to  be  a  minister  and  all! 

Robert  certainly  had  a  way  with  tipsy 
men,  for  there  are  the  two  of  them,  going 
away  from  the  saloon  and  back  to  the 
farm.  Robert  on  his  horse  rides  to  the 
rear  of  the  trousers  that  are,  oh,  so  piti- 
ful! They  pitifully  halt  and  stumble. 
And  if  presently  you  think  you  see  the 
trousers  a-horseback,  the  beggar  riding 
and  Robert  afoot,  you  are  right ;  for  so  it 
is,  the  old  gentleman  confesses  it.  And 
just  as  you  foresaw,  the  beggar  gives  the 
mare  a  cut  and  off  they  go  at  full  gallop, 
back  again  to  the  pit  from  which  the 
trousers  have  been  digged.  And  it  is  all 
to  be  done  over,  with  the  difference  that 
Robert  rides,  and  it  is  evening. 
80 


THE  WAGES  OF  YOUTH 

II 

On  a  day  in  September  Robert  asked 
for  his  wages,  as  he  must  now  be  going  to 
college.  Forty-two  dollars  the  farmer 
owed  him,  and  well  he  knew  that  his 
farm-hand  must  be  going  to  college,  and 
when.  But  never  a  cent  would  he  be 
paying  him  then,  for  there  was  his  hay, 
said  he,  in  the  field.  And  there  for  all 
of  Robert  it  is  standing  to  this  day. 

At  the  crossroads  Robert  sat  down  by 
his  carpet-bag  and  took  account  of  the 
five  cents  in  his  pocket.  He  sits  and  sits, 
looking  up  and  down  the  road  that  is 
empty  in  the  September  sunlight,  and 
presently  he  feels  a  tear. 

"Oh,  but  why?"  we  exclaim,  terribly 
upset;  because  by  now  we  are  inured  to 
poverty  and  we  had  banked  on  Robert 
not  to  cry. 

"Because  I  thought  there  would  be  a 
81 


A  FORTUNATE  YOUTH 

man  with  a  wagon,"  explains  the  old 
gentleman,  off  the  top  of  this  remem- 
brance; and  then  he  says  that  it  was  a 
tear  of  self-pity,  Robert's  first,  and  that 
feeling  it  there  on  his  cheek,  he  jumped 
up  and  was  angry.  He  starts  off  with  his 
cari>et-bag  while  we  hurry  up  the  man 
with  the  wagon  —  it  is  a  load  of  hay  this 
time,  and  not  alert. 

In  those  days  the  street-car  came  to 
the  end  of  Archer  Avenue.  There  Robert 
was  dropped  by  the  hay -wagon.  And 
that  would  have  been  all  right,  too,  but 
the  fare  was  six  cents,  and  Robert  with 
five  in  his  pocket!  Surely  you  begin  to 
feel  now  how  wrong  it  is  to  add  a  penny 
to  the  five-cent  fare.  Robert  parleys 
with  the  conductor  of  that  street-car  be- 
fore he  goes  aboard;  do  not  think  that 
he  is  the  only  lad  who  has  done  so,  and 
with  shame.  Yes,  he  says  that  he  felt  like 
a  beggar  when  the  conductor  told  him 
82 


THE  WAGES  OF  YOUTH 

to  come  aboard  aliyway  and  "We'll  see 
what  we  can  do."  And  from  the  foot 
of  Archer  Avenue  to  the  heart  of  Chi- 
cago the  conductor  ignores  Robert,  who 
remembers  him  to  this  day.  "And 
that  was  the  day,"  says  the  old  gentle- 
man, glad  to  turn  from  these  hard  details 
to  romance,  "that  I  entered  college." 
"And  you  had  not  a  penny,"  we  remind 
him.  But  oh,  yes,  he  had;  for  he  collected 
at  once  and  upon  that  very  day  ten  dol- 
lars that  were  owing  him. 

"Now  who  could  have  owed  you  ten 
dollars?"  we  ask  him.  But  he  has  for- 
gotten long  ago  —  some  poor  fellow,  he 
tells  us,  and  that  you  must  never  de- 
spair of  the  return  of  money  you  have 
lent;  neither,  indeed,  must  you  expect  it. 
And  he  will  tell  us  strange  tales  of  money 
returned  after  many  years,  —  from  good 
men  and  bad  men,  —  and  do  we  remem- 
ber the  English  bride  and  groom  who 
83 


A  FORTUNATE  YOUTH 

brought  a  puppy  to  pay  their  hard-luck 
loan? 

We  remember  too,  too  many  of  the 
old  gentleman's  loans,  and  we  like  to  for- 
get them.  We  think  it  fortunate  that  his 
debtor  of  1868  paid  him  ten  dollars  and 
not  a  pup.  We  bring  him  back  to  that 
September  day  in  the  heart  of  Chicago, 
and  himself  about  to  enter  college. 

There  is  nothing  adequate  in  us  to  feel 
what  the  old  gentleman  so  obviously  felt 
—  and  feels  —  of  the  thrilling  climactic 
value  of  this  event.  We  try  to  feel  it, 
and  we  can  only  feel  that  here  is  Youth 
come  at  last  by  desperate  ways  to  his 
"hunger's  rarest  food  and  water  ever  to 
his  wildest  thirst. " 

We  follow  him,  after  his  registration, 
along  Cottage  Grove  Avenue  and  the 
railroad  track,  upon  a  never-to-be-for- 
gotten walk  which  he  took  solely  to  savor 
this  consummation.  But  we  follow  him 
84 


THE  WAGES  OF  YOUTH 

at  a  distance,  not  to  disturb  him  with 
our  thoughts  of  the  probable  bleakness 
of  the  old  building  where  he  has  regis- 
tered, and  of  the  odd  fancy  that  has 
lighted  for  a  celebration  upon  a  railroad 
track.  It  must  be  surely  that  he  has 
meat  to  eat  that  we  know  not  of.  And 
this  brings  us  back  to  the  matter  of  a 
living. 

"But  surely,"  we  ask  him,  "you  did 
not  let  the  farmer  keep  the  forty  dollars 
you  had  earned.?" 

That  he  did  not.  On  every  Saturday 
afternoon  for  eight  weeks  he  dunned 
that  farmer,  from  whom  on  each  visit  he 
received  five  dollars.  And  with  this  and 
the  money  he  earned  from  delivering  the 
Chicago  Republican,  he  lived.  He  rose  at 
four  and  delivered  papers  until  eight, 
and  he  lived,  we  are  begged  to  believe, 
uncommonly  well.  And  he  was  a  great 
walker!  Let  us  hope  so.  And  that  to  this 
85 


A  FORTUNATE  YOUTH 

day,  when  he  sees  a  lad  at  a  meal  of 
pancakes  and  coffee  in  a  restaurant,  he 
thinks  of  himself  in  those  wonderful  aca- 
demic days.  It  was  then,  he  tells  us,  that 
he  fell  into  his  cherished  way  of  working 
late  at  night.  And  in  those  days,  too,  he 
made  friends. 

This  is  the  way  he  made  a  friend  in 
church:  he  was  standing  in  the  aisle 
while  the  minister  was  praying,  and  he 
saw  —  don't  ask  him  how  —  a  pair  of 
shoes  beside  his  own.  They  were  old 
country  shoes.  And  when  the  prayer 
was  done,  he  looked  up  from  the  shoes 
into  the  face  of  a  youth  like  himself,  and 
that  was  the  beginning  of  a  friendship. 

There  is  this  about  selling  newspapers 
—  you  don't  keep  it  up.  All  the  most 
interesting  newsboys  are  ex-newsboys. 
They  may  have  loved  the  calling  that 
had  them  up  before  the  dawn,  but  for 
financial  reasons  they  have  left  it,  little 
86 


THE  WAGES  OF  YOUTH 

materialists  that  they  are.  And  Robert 
was  like  that.  On  a  day  in  November, 
the  sun  having  risen  later  than  usual  on 
that  day,  he  set  out  to  get  him  a  new  job. 

"I  thought  I  would  go  along  South 
Water  Street,"  says  the  old  gentleman, 
"and  climb  every  stair.  At  the  corner  of 
Wells  Street  and  at  the  top  of  the  first 
stair  I  saw  an  open  door,  and  at  a  table, 
with  his  back  to  the  door,  a  man  writing 
like  thunder.  He  wore  a  slouch  hat.  He 
heard  my  feet  and  that  I  paused  at  the 
door,  and  he  said,  but  he  did  not  turn 
around,  — 

"Well,  what  can  I  do  for  you?" 

"I  want  a  job,  sir." 

"WTiatcanyoudo?" 

"Anything,  sir." 

"We  don't  want  you,  sir!"  came  the 
instant  report  from  that  man,  who  never 
turned  to  look  at  our  Robert  at  the  door. 

One  of  the  lovers  of  our  old  gentleman 
87 


A  FORTUNATE  YOUTH 

begs  to  know  why  in  all  these  words 
about  him  there  is  no  word  of  his  eyes 
and  his  voice.  And  at  this  reproach  we 
claim  that  we  are  saving  them  up.  But 
in  our  hearts  we  wonder  how  could  that 
man  in  the  slouch  hat  not  have  turned 
to  the  voice  at  the  door?  For  then  he 
would  have  seen  the  eyes  —  and  who 
knows?  But  no,  there  he  is  through  all 
the  years,  never  turning,  and  writing 
like  thunder. 

Now  Robert  going  down  the  stairs  is 
saying  to  himself,  "There  must  be  a 
reason!  He  did  n't  look  at  me,  so  it 
was  n't  that.  Or  ask  me  other  questions. 
There  must  be  a  reason  T^  And  before 
he  went  up  the  next  stair  he  thought  he 
had  light. 

There,  in  an  office  full  of  youths  ad- 
dressing envelopes,  Robert  begs  to  speak 
to  Mr.  Wells.    "How  did  you  know  his 
name  was  Wells?"  we  ask  the  old  gentle- 
88 


THE  WAGES  OF  YOUTH 

man,  who  says,  "The  name  was  on  the 
door."  And  presently  he  says  to  Mr. 
Wells:  — 

*'I  want  a  job,  sir." 

"What  can  you  do?" 

"I  can  address  envelopes,"  clips  out 
Robert,  little  flashes  of  the  new  light 
shining  through  the  chinks  of  him.  And 
when  Mr.  Wells  says,  but  that  is  only 
boy's  work,  Robert  answers,  in  the  best 
melodramatic  form,  "All  I  want  is  to 
earn  my  bread,  sir!" 

And  so  he  does :  he  earns  his  bread  ad- 
dressing envelopes.  But  oh,  he  has  such 
a  way  with  envelopes  that  his  employer 
remarks  it.  On  the  very  first  pay-day  it 
is  remarked,  and  his  life-story  is  inquired 
into,  and  his  aims  are  asked  after,  and 
this  searching  question  is  put :  — 

"  Can  you  live  on  five  dollars  a  week?  " 

"I  have  to,  sir,"  says  Robert,  with  ex- 
actly the  accent  that  you  imagine  you 
89 


A  FORTUNATE  YOUTH 

hear  when  you  are  reading  these  things 
in  a  book. 

And  then  you  hear  that  on  Monday 
he  is  to  be  made  foreman  of  all  those 
young  scribes! 

Do  you  hear  that,  you  who  write  like 
thunder,  never  turning  the  head? 

As  foreman  he  received  ten  dollars  a 
week,  and  there  was  once  more  money 
to  send  home.  We  seem  not  to  have 
heard  from  home  this  long  time,  but 
that  is  only  because  the  news  is  too  sad. 
The  old  gentleman  was  wishing  not  to 
tell  us  the  news,  for  Murdo  is  ill  and  his 
mother  is  dead.  People  Mall  not  be  wish- 
ing to  know  these  things,  they  are  too 
sad,  the  old  gentleman  tells  us;  and  we 
remark  in  him  the  beginning  of  a  secret 
look  and  a  look  of  warning.  We  have  a 
feeling  that  if  we  pass  too  often  this  way 
we  will  come  to  a  door  marked,  "Strictly 
Private,"  and  with  fresh  paint.  So  we 
90 


THE  WAGES  OF  YOUTH 

withdraw.  We  turn  to  the  door  marked, 
"Business  Only."  And  there  we  come 
upon  a  figure  in  the  grand  manner  — 
and  this  is  My  Employer! 

There  is  this  difference  between  My 
Employer  and  the  statues  of  frock- 
coated,  estimable  men  to  be  seen  in 
parks  —  he  has  a  heart.  He  has  a  most 
practical  and  lively  interest  in  young 
men  who  go  to  college.  He  pays  them 
exorbitant  wages,  and  like  Joseph  in  the 
car  of  Pharaoh,  they  go  abroad  adorned 
with  the  symbols  of  trust  and  office.  In 
My  Employer's  chariot  they  go  abroad, 
and  there  is  an  Ethiopian  to  drive  them. 
They  collect  rents.  They  are  all  day 
gone  collecting  rents,  and  munching  on 
a  lunch  put  up  by  the  wife  of  My  Em- 
ployer. Fabulous  things  happen  to  them, 
both  of  good  and  of  evil.  To  Robert  him- 
self there  happened  the  affair  of  The 
Barber  Who  Would  Not  Pay  His  Rent. 
91 


A  FORTUNATE  YOUTH 

On  a  Saturday  night  he  would  not  pay 
his  rent;  rather  he  would  pay  it  on  a 
Monday.  And  on  the  Monday  his  house 
was  not  to  be  found  among  the  houses 
upon  Front  Street.  Hundreds  of  de- 
tached small  houses  there  were  on  Front 
Street,  all  alike,  and  among  them,  nei- 
ther on  that  Monday  nor  thereafter,  was 
there  found  any  timber  of  number  632, 
or  serpent  on  a  pole,  or  smell  of  a  barber. 
The  house,  I  do  assure  you,  had  van- 
ished. The  old  gentleman  believes  that 
the  barber  took  it  away  on  wheels,  thus 
breaking  the  Sabbath;  but  the  Aladdin 
look  of  Robert,  in  these  days  of  the  late 
sixties,  makes  us  wonder. 

We  had  supposed  that  My  Employ- 
er's name  was  Wells,  but  no,  his  name 
is  now  Forsythe.  He  is  a  lawyer.  Rob- 
ert was  a  present  from  Mr.  Wells  to 
Mr.  Forsythe,  and  there  would  be  men- 
tion in  the  inventory  —  be  sure  of  it 
92 


THE  WAGES  OF  YOUTH 

—  of  the  eyes  and  of  the  voice.  And 
of  "thirty-two  sound  teeth;  small  but 
comely;  willing;  of  good  habits,  and  has 
a  way  with  him.    Teetotaler.'* 

From  the  day  Robert  receives  ten 
dollars  a  week  and  is  delivered  over  to 
My  Employer,  we  seem  to  lose  him.  He 
passes  and  repasses  us  on  his  weighty 
errands  in  the  chariot  of  Pharaoh,  and 
he  would  salute  us  if  he  saw  us,  never 
doubt  it;  but  all  his  eye  is  upon  My  Em- 
ployer. 

When  we  reproach  him  with  this,  as 
we  cannot  always  forbear  to  do,  he  has 
his  reasons.  On  such  a  day  Long  John 
Wentworth  called  upon  My  Employer, 
and  on  another  day,  N.  B.  Judd.  We 
are  to  understand  from  the  old  gentle- 
man that  really  nothing  of  importance 
occurred  in  Chicago  without  the  let  of 
My  Employer. 

"Well,  there  was  the  fire, "  we  suggest; 

93 


A  FORTUNATE  YOUTH 

and  the  old  gentleman  is  taken  back  a 
bit.  He  cannot  prove  that  My  Employer 
either  provided  or  prevented  the  fire. 
Having  brought  him  to  earth,  we  try  to 
get  news  of  our  Robert. 

"Do  tell  us,"  we  beg,  "what  Robert 
lost  in  the  fire!" 

And  the  old  gentleman  says,  taken  by 
surprise  like  this,  —  and  make  what  you 
like  of  it,  — 

"That  was  the  summer  I  had  met 
your  mother."  And  then  with  immedi- 
ate craft  he  amends,  "I  lost  my  mother's 
letters." 

And  many  books  he  lost,  though  he 
saved  a  dictionary.  And  this  he  claims 
to  have  observed,  standing  at  the  bridge 
at  Wells  Street,  over  which  the  refugees 
streamed  on  that  illuminated  night  — 
that  all  the  men  were  talking  and  talk- 
ing and  talking  and  all  the  women  were 
silent.   Did  you  ever?   And  oh,  yes,  he 


THE  WAGES  OF  YOUTH 

remembers  now  that  he  lost  in  the  fire 
a  valuable  stone  set  in  a  ring  and  given 
him  by  My  Employer! 

We  give  it  up.  We  wait  until  the  day 
when  My  Employer  calls  him  to  the  in- 
ner office  and  makes  him  the  familiar 
offer  —  the  offer  made  by  the  Francie 
Henrys  of  the  farm  and  by  the  eloquent 
uncle  of  the  doctor's  practice.  There  is 
the  august  person  of  My  Employer  mak- 
ing the  familiar  proffering  gesture,  and 
Robert  once  more  the  gesture  of  refusal. 
We  know  we  have  him  back  again,  minus 
the  chain  of  office  and  the  seal-ring  lost 
in  the  fire.  But  oh,  if  you  hear  a  chink- 
ing in  the  pocket  of  Robert  who  has  re- 
turned to  us,  that  is  a  real  chinking,  and 
of  more  than  two  bawbees!  For  a  little 
while  there  is  that  chinking,  and  it  is 
surely  an  odd  sound,  a  kind  of  sound  of 
fairy  gold  soon  to  vanish  by  way  of  the 
post  and  other  ways. 
95 


A  FORTUNATE  YOUTH 

III 

In  those  days  Robert  lived  on  the 
second  floor  of  the  dormitory  of  a  theo- 
logical seminary.  Often  he  wearied  of 
Chicago.  "I  was  often  homesick  then," 
says  the  old  gentleman.  "Oh,  I  could 
have  painted  the  heather  on  the  hills  and 
the  very  rocks  among  the  heather!" 

"But  all  the  time  you  were  with  your 
Employer  you  never  said  a  word  of  this, " 
we  urge;  "and  we  thought  —  " 

"Because  it  was  too  sad, "  says  the  old 
gentleman,  hoping  we  will  let  him  off 
without  the  story  of  Katie.  But  that  we 
could  never  do  —  and  Robert  with  a 
sound  of  money  in  his  pocket. 

It  would  be  on  a  night  of  the  summer 
of  '72  —  not  a  moonlight  night.  There 
were  four  theological  students  in  the  old 
hall;  the  rest  were  on  vacation.  The  old 
gentleman  thinks  that  there  were  stars. 
96 


THE  WAGES  OF  YOUTH 

Robert  was  asleep  in  his  room  above  the 
entrance,  and  he  woke  suddenly  to  a 
cough  that  was  his  mother's  cough. 

**I  thought  it  was  my  mother  cough- 
ing," says  the  old  gentleman,  "and  I 
knew  it  was  not.  I  sat  up  in  bed  and  I 
heard  the  cough  again.  Down  at  the 
outer  door.  I  put  my  head  out  of  the 
window  and  there  in  the  starlight  I  saw 
a  woman.  'Who's  there?'  I  called,  and 
she  turned  her  face  up.  'It 's  me,  Ruble,' 
she  said;  'it's  Katie.'  And  it  was  my 
sister  Katie." 

A  bed  was  made  for  her  that  night  in 
one  of  the  empty  rooms,  and  there  that 
Highland  girl  slept  after  what  lonely 
journeyings.  What  did  they  talk  of, 
those  two  who  had  been  parted  now  six 
years.?  The  old  gentleman  cannot  bring 
himself  to  tell  us.  There  is  not  a  brother 
left  to  him,  and  of  his  little  sisters  here 
is  Katie  looking  to  him  for  what  it  is  now 
97 


A  FORTUNATE  YOUTH 

too  late  for  him  to  do.  She  was  very 
intelligent,  he  tells  us,  and  very  brave. 
She  had  need  to  be.  She  was  with  him 
six  weeks,  and  of  a  day  in  the  last  of 
these  weeks  we  have  this  account.  That 
it  was  raining.  And  that  Robert  was 
walking  up  and  down  his  room  as  a  young 
man  does  who  is  making  a  sermon  —  and 
so  he  was :  Robert  was  making  a  sermon 
to  preach  that  very  Sunday.  And  that 
Katie  was  not  turning  her  head  away 
from  the  window  at  all;  she  was  looking 
out  at  the  rain.  And  that  she  said:  — 

"Robert,  if  I  should  die  would  you 
bury  me  here?*' 

And  that  Robert  then  asked  her  would 
she  like  to  be  going  home  now? 

And  that  she  said,  "O  Rubie,  I  would 
fine  like  to  be  going. " 

And  they  went.  At  once. 

This  is  how  Robert  came  to  go  home 
in  the  summer  of  '72.  And  on  the  dock 
98 


THE  WAGES  OF  YOUTH 

in  New  York  there  came  up  to  him  a 
young  Scot  with  his  wife  —  and  would 
Robert  give  her  over  to  her  mother  in 
Greenock?  She  was  that  homesick  there 
was  nothing  else  for  it.  And  it  may  be 
three  months  will  do  it,  the  husband 
thinks. 

But  why  did  he  pick  on  Robert?  And 
we  are  reminded  that  the  whole  of  them 
were  Scotch,  and  it  would  be  the  white 
tie.  At  which,  upon  looking  well  at  Rob- 
ert, we  do  observe  that  he  wears  a  white 
tie. 

"Did  you  go  second  cabin?"  we  ask. 

But  no;  because  of  Katie  they  went 
first  cabin.  And  when  they  came  to 
Greenock  the  mother  of  the  little  home- 
sick bride  came  out  in  a  boat,  and  the 
girl,  except  that  Robert  restrained  her, 
would  have  gone  over  the  side  before  she 
could  get  down  the  ladder.  And  when 
they  came  to  their  own  home  village  of 
99 


A  FORTUNATE  YOUTH 

the  three  corners,  there  truly  it  was,  and 
oh,  but  it  was  little  and  wee!  All  perfect 
it  was,  as  remembered,  but  so  low  and 
under  such  a  sky  as  you  could  lay  hands 
upon.  You  could  never  have  believed  it. 

And  there  is  another  boy,  that  cannot 
be  yourself,  selling  tickets  from  your 
very  window.  The  first  man  you  meet  in 
the  street  is  the  blacksmith  you  worked 
for;  and  you  are  glad  to  see  him,  but  he 
cannot  remember  you.  He  is  looking  at 
your  white  tie  and  at  your  young  face 
that  is  too  eager,  with  the  ironic  indifiFer- 
ence  of  the  aged. 

"Don't  you  remember  me?"  you  ask 
him. 

And  he  says,  "I  canna  just  seem  to 
remember." 

Ah,  well,  there  are  two  little  sisters  in 

the  house;  they  will  trouble  to  remember 

who  is  the  young  man  at  the  door,  with 

poor  Katie  come  home  so  soon.    They 

100 


THE  WAGES  OF  YOUTH 

cook  a  haddock  for  him,  remembering 
gleefully  more  than  they  ever  knew. 
But  when  the  young  stranger  with  the 
white  tie  knocks  on  the  door  of  his  fath- 
er's workshop,  that  old  man  looks  at  him 
long  and  asks,  " Now  what  micht  ye  he?" 

This  is  the  work  of  six  years,  plus  a 
white  tie. 

The  old  gentleman  has  little  to  say 
of  his  two  weeks  in  that  village.  He 
casts  about  for  pleasing  adventures  with 
which  to  enliven  us.  He  tells  us  how  he 
knocked  upon  a  door  to  claim  his  clean 
linen,  and  there  across  the  ironing-table 
was  Euphemia,  her  skirts  kilted  to  her 
knees  like  the  Highland  girl  she  was. 
"You  remember,"  says  the  old  gentle- 
man, "I  kissed  her  once." 

And  we  remember.    But  surely  the 

memory  of  one  kiss  does  not  make  a 

summer,  and  we  feel  a  growing  bleakness 

in  the  village  of  three  corners.   We  bear 

101 


A  FORTUNATE  YOUTH 

it  as  long  as  we  can  and  then  we  say, 
"Oh,  let's  go  home!" 

"I  was  just  thinking  of  that  myself," 
says  Robert;  "but  first  I  must  go  to  see 
my  old  aunt  in  Nigg." 

When  Robert  went  to  see  his  old  aunt 
in  Nigg,  his  father  went  with  him.  And 
it  was  observed  of  old  Winter  that  he 
talked  more  to  that  son  of  his,  home  on 
visit,  than  ever  he  had  been  known  to 
talk  to  another.  Aye,  wherever  they 
went  together,  they  talked.  On  this  day 
young  Robert  wore  an  overcoat.  Chilly 
he  was,  most  like,  and  his  aunt,  thinking 
as  much,  went  to  a  cupboard  from  which 
she  brought  a  brown  bottle  and  two 
glasses. 

"Three,  surely,"  we  say;  but  the  old 
gentleman  remembers  well  that  it  was 
two.  And  said  she,  — 

"You  '11  have  a  drop,  Robert." 

Robert  said,  "Not  any,  thanks." 
102 


THE  WAGES  OF  YOUTH 

"Aye,  lad,"  said  she,  **but  you're 
chilly. " 

"No,  really,  aunt,"  says  our  Robert, 
"I  make  it  a  habit  not  to  take  it. " 

"Ah,  but  you'll  tak  this,  man,"  she 
tells  him  with  an  obvious  zest;  "it's 
smuggled!'^ 

"Even  so,  aunt,  do  not  press  me,  for 
I  have  religious  scruples  against  it." 

Oh  dear,  oh  dear!  Who  could  abide 
it!  "Releegious  scruples,  is  it.''  Aye,  aye!" 
and  she  wags  her  head.  "Releegious 
scruples!"  And  if  a  flash  from  old  eyes 
could  blast  a  white  tie,  then  that  tie  is 
blasted.  "Nay,  it 's  just  proud  you  are, 
and  not  wishing  to  drink  with  your  old 
aunt!"  She  busies  herself  filling  the 
glasses,  flicking  him  with  her  glance  and 
muttering  about  "releegious  scruples  — 
aye,  aye!" 

"Now,  John,"  she  says  to  Robert's 
father,  "you'll  tak  a  drop."  And  she 
103 


A  FORTUNATE  YOUTH 

sits  at  the  table.  She  folds  her  hands  un- 
der her  apron.  John  folds  his  old  hands 
by  his  glass.  The  two  of  them  look  at 
Robert  —  him  of  the  white  tie  —  and 
she  says  in  an  accent  of  sharpest  irony, 
"Noo,  Robert,  you  '11  ask  the  blessing ! " 

Robert  asks  the  blessing  on  the  whis- 
key he  would  not  drink.  So  much  for  him 
and  his  religious  scrupling  in  the  very 
home  and  birthplace  of  that  art. 

"It  was  not  my  conviction  vexed  her, " 
explains  the  old  gentleman,  "but  my 
manners.  If  I  had  never  mentioned  my 
scruples  at  all,  but  had  raised  the  glass 
to  her  and  to  my  father,  I  need  only  have 
said,  'Slyanche!'  —  and  that  is  the  old 
Gaelic  toast  —  to  have  taken  the  curse 
off  my  abstinence." 

But  Robert  thought  of  this  too  late. 
We  know  those  words  that  come  to 
mind  too  late  and  can  never  now  be 
said. 

104 


THE  WAGES  OF  YOUTH 

Odd,  is  n't  it?  But  Robert  cannot 
remember  his  second  going-away.  Too 
many  have  gone  away  before  him,  who 
are  not  there  to  see  him  go.  He  cannot 
remember  was  it  afternoon  or  evening, 
or  what  it  was.  But  he  remembers  that, 
when  he  came  to  sail  from  Greenock, 
there  was  that  Scotchman's  bride  at  the 
boat,  and  she  was  just  begging  him  to 
take  her  home  with  him,  for  home  is  in 
the  West  after  all. 

"She  cried  and  all,"  says  the  old  gen- 
tleman; "but  I  remembered  how  her 
husband  had  said,  'three  months  would 
do  it,'  and  here  was  no  more  than  two 
weeks  gone.  So  I  left  her." 

And  she  crying  and  all ! 

There  was  something  very  special 
about  the  spire  of  Trinity  Church  in 
those  days  when  seen  from  a  ship's  deck. 
You  saw  it  from  the  Narrows,  as  you  en- 
tered New  York  harbor.  It  was  very 
105 


A  FORTUNATE  YOUTH 

high  —  the  old  gentleman  says  so.  It 
thrust  up  into  the  bright  air  above  the 
soil  of  America  in  a  particular  way.  Rob- 
ert, still  sad  from  that  little  wee  village 
of  three  corners  and  something  strange 
and  haunted  there,  saw  this  spire  from 
the  ship,  and  in  his  heart  he  felt  a  thrill- 
ing recognition  and  an  appropriation  — 
it  was  as  if  he  took  possession  then  of 
his  country  and  of  his  man's  estate.  Hail ! 
he  said.  And  oh,  he  said,  farewell. 
Farewell ! 

But  many  a  time  since,  the  old  gentle- 
man has  wished  —  I  have  heard  him 
wish  it  —  that  Robert  had  raised  his 
glass  to  his  old  aunt  and  to  his  father, 
saying,  "Slyanche!" 


THE    END 

106 


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